I went through all my blog posts for 2020; there were approximately 250 of them and I singled out 24 for my top posts. That’s too many and so I whittled it down to 12.
Here they are from earliest to latest:
Tales of Socialism, February 6.
Winners, Losers, and Interesting Aspects of the Dem Debate, February 20.
Cost Benefit Analysis of Flattening the Curve, March 24.
Why the Stimulus Bill As Written Will Keep Unemployment High, March 25.
The VSL Quandary, April 12.
Zingales on the Rule of Economists, May 17.
Commissar Komisar, May 21.
Benjamin Boyce Interviews Adrian Lee Oliver, July 15.
What’s the Moral Case for Capitalism?, August 20.
A Partial Defense of Milton Friedman’s 1970 NYT Essay, September 21.
Is Cowen Right about the Great Barrington Declaration? Part 1, October 16.
Vaccines’ Last Hurdle: Central Planners, December 4.
I’m curious what some of your favorites are.
READER COMMENTS
LEB
Dec 31 2020 at 10:38pm
I really appreciated the insight from “Are Higher-Paying Jobs Worse than Lower-Paying Jobs”.
I also liked “I Am Not David Henderson” for the title and general hilarity of the situation. (Although I am still a little confused by your explanation that you always comment and post under David R. Henderson—you seem to do both under David Henderson on this site)
David Henderson
Jan 1 2021 at 11:05pm
Thanks.
Good question about David Henderson and David R. Henderson.
When I go to comment on this site, it tells me I’m logged in as David Henderson. Somehow I would have to override that to log in as David R. Henderson. I’m not even sure how to do it. Other times, when I have to start from scratch, I choose David R. Henderson. When I first started blogging at EconLog, I wanted my name to be David R. Henderson, but the webmaster, for a reason I didn’t understand, said no.
LEB
Jan 2 2021 at 3:20am
That makes sense, thank you for clarifying.
I hadn’t seen “Tales of Socialism”, I’m glad you posted it again here.
KevinDC
Jan 1 2021 at 12:30pm
I very much enjoyed the series of blog posts which culminated in “Response to a Friend About Fear of Death.” Death is a universal, something we all have to be aware of and guard against, but also makes important points that guarding against it too much just isn’t worth it. As was once said by the great political philosopher Dave Barry, “By the standards of today, the main purpose of human life is to eliminate all risk so human life will last as long as humanly possible, no matter how tedious it gets.”
“Tobin Taxes and Elasticity” was another good one – it reminds me of Thomas Sowell’s admonition to always think beyond step one. The news story you quoted in that post predicted the “tax would generate an estimated $10 billion annually for the state.” Of course, this also necessarily entails that the tax will raise the cost of doing business in the state by $10 billion annually. Too many people only look at step one – the revenue you could gain. They don’t think about step two, which is when people decide to stop doing business there because of the increased costs.
David R. Henderson
Jan 1 2021 at 11:07pm
Thanks, Kevin.
Nick Ronalds
Jan 1 2021 at 5:20pm
I just re-read your April 12 post on the VSL Quandary and was reminded that when I first read I was appalled that an economist as good as Zingales could write and actually believe something so crazy. How crazy? Well, for starters 1) we can’t spend $65 trillion because we don’t have it; 2) Credit markets would never allow us to borrow that much, at least not quickly; 3) for the sake of argument, if we could borrow that much, our debt would approach 400% of our GDP (it was already close to 100%), and to claim without evidence that the consequences of such massive borrowing might not be catastrophic is magical thinking; 4) Shouldn’t an economist know that there are tradeoffs, and $65 trillion spent on the Coronovirus is $65 trillion not spent on all the other problems facing the country and humanity? Shouldn’t anyone advocating a hugely expensive project have to demonstrate the marginal dollar spent on such a project exceeds the benefits of a dollar spent on any alternatives? Every year cancer kills about 700,000 Americans and heart disease almost as many. Why don’t we spend $65 trillion on each of those too? And maybe we should spend another $65 trillion teaching people to stay slim, since obesity and diabetes are the primary causes of such metabolic diseases and a major risk factor in COVID19?
The Coronovirus/COVID response was appalling in many ways, but one of the biggest disappointments to me was the fact that many economists, who one might expect to remind the rest of us about trade-offs, instead added to the brainless din led by newspaper headline writers and twenty-something journalists.
Your skeptical take at the time was notable for its rarity, so thanks for that.
David R. Henderson
Jan 1 2021 at 11:08pm
Thanks.
Comments are closed.