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May 17 2022
Economics of Education
By:
David Henderson
I was on San Francisco all-news radio station KCBS on Sunday morning to address the issue of student debt. The link is here. The whole thing is only about 5 minutes. You'll see that the interviewer caught me off guard with his first question, but I adjusted. Thanks to Brandon Berg, who commented on my April 28 post o...
May 16 2022
Economics of Health Care
By:
David Henderson
Coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, we've seen an alarming increase in proposed scope of practice expansions. The American Medical Association is unrelenting in opposing these expansions on your behalf to ensure patient safety at every turn. We are determined to ensure that patient care is led by highly trained physic...
May 15 2022
Austrian Economics
By:
David Henderson
I've held off writing an obituary for George Smith because I wasn't sure that the obituary friends pointed to was truly of him. But David Boaz has convinced me that it was. I had lost touch with George and so I didn't know that he had moved to Bloomington, Illinois. David Boaz's obituary of George is an excellent summ...
May 14 2022
Economics of Health Care
By:
David Henderson
I find it refreshing when a government agency says no to spending more money. Last month, in an editorial titled "Sandbagging an Alzheimer's Treatment," the Wall Street Journal editors criticized the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for refusing to pay for Biogen's new Alzheimer's drug, Aduhelm. In their ed...
May 11 2022
Money and Inflation
By:
David Henderson
Alan Reynolds beat me to it, with an excellent analysis of the latest inflation numbers. Alan notes that "CNBC, like others, reported that 'The consumer price index accelerated 8.3% in April.'" No it didn't. It rose by 8.3 percent from the same time last year. But the CPI rose by 0.33 percent in April. Compare that to...
May 10 2022
International Trade
By:
David Henderson
A $100 bill, if you can keep it. In the May 9, 2022 Wall Street Journal, Markos Kounolakis, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, a former Moscow correspondent for NBC Radio, and the “second gentleman” of California, writes that he wants to hurt Russians by rapidly phasing out the U.S. $100 bills that many o...
May 9 2022
Labor Mobility, Immigration, Outsourcing
By:
David Henderson
This weekend I watched a CBS Sunday Morning show that I had taped a few weeks ago. There was a fairly depressing segment on the cost of child care versus the amount of money a parent, typically a woman, could make. The solution that one of the interviewees advocated was higher government subsidies for children. She mis...
Read this Pierre Lemieux #LibertyClassic:
Nov 5 2018
Liberty Classics
By Pierre Lemieux
James Buchanan is not easy to categorize. Is he a libertarian? A classical liberal? A conservative? Or perhaps even a "liberal" in the modern American sense of "progressive" or "social democrat"? Is he an economist or a philosopher? It is paradoxical but not totally wrong to answer "all of the above," so complex and ri...
May 8 2022
Austrian Economics
By:
David Henderson
I never have trouble remembering Friedrich Hayek's birthday (May 8) because it's the same day as my late sister's birthday and the same day as VE Day. Here's a link to some reminiscences of the first time I met Hayek. A highlight from that link: In June 1975, when I attended the second Austrian conference in Hartford,...
May 8 2022
Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings
By:
David Henderson
In response to my post titled "Who's Responsible for Student Loans?" April 28, 2022, frequent commenter Vivian Darkbloom wrote: At the risk of keeping this too simple, I’d say it’s the person(s) signing or co-signing the loan agreement. I LedOL when I saw this. It reminded me of something I read when I was 18 and w...
May 7 2022
International Trade
By:
David Henderson
“Something must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it.” Those are my favorite three linesfrom Yes, Prime Minister, a British comedy series about politics. Most politicians who face a problem think that “something must be done.” Unfortunately, they tend to reach the same conclusion that the adviser...
May 6 2022
Economics of Health Care
By:
David Henderson
Seriously, FDA? The Food and Drug Administration decided yesterday to strictly limit"who can receive Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine." Why? Because of "the ongoing risk of rare but serious blood clots." How rare but serious? Matthew Perrone and Lauren Neergaard, in "FDA restricts J&J's COVID-19 d...
May 5 2022
Central Planning
By:
David Henderson
Do the Central Planners Give a Damn? I have a cottage at Minaki, Ontario, which is down the Winnipeg River from the Lake of the Woods. Under a treaty between Canada and the United States, the Lake of the Woods can't go above a certain level. The reason is that part of the Lake of the Woods is in Canada and part is in ...
May 4 2022
Economic Philosophy
By:
David Henderson
On April 20, I attended a talk given at Stanford University by Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. It started with a one-hour taping of an interview of Peterson by master interviewer Peter Robinson. Then it went to Q&A. The interview, part of the series "Uncommon Knowledge," is here. In a later post, I want to...
May 3 2022
Central Planning
By:
David Henderson
This is my final post on Cecilia Rouse's talk last Thursday on Biden's Economic policies. Part I is here and Part II is here. 30:00: Many people say that the increased child care tax credit and the enhanced unemployment benefits were a disincentive to work. “The evidence on that is not as strong as one might think, a...
May 2 2022
Labor Market
By:
David Henderson
Yesterday I posted on the Zoom talk that Biden CEA chair Cecilia Rouse gave to a Stanford audience last Thursday. Here's Part II. Part III will come tomorrow. 11:40: Rouse notes the dramatic drop in compensation in the labor market from February 2020 to April 2020, “when we asked everybody to go home.” Not quite ac...