Russ Roberts of George Mason University has written a very good article for the Mercatus Center explaining – for economists and non-economists – how government intervention created distortions in the housing and finance sectors. He also blames Wall Street,…
Daily Analysis
More Much-Needed VAT Bashing
A former Governor of Delaware, Pete DuPont, explains that a value-added tax means bigger government and slower growth. This issue is very important since Obama clearly is trying to set the stage for imposing this European-style national sales tax in the United…
Government Is a Racket to Enrich Bureaucrats and Rip Off the Rest of Us
Every experience I’ve had with speed cameras has been negative. That’s hardly a surprise, but the other common experience is that they always are set up in places where the speed limit is absurdly low (a 45-mph limit on a stretch of interstate highway in…
More Regulation Will Increase Systemic Risk
One bonus of speaking at the Global Financial Services Centres Conference in Dublin last week is that I got to listen to Paul Atkins, a former Commissioner at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Unlike many others who have served in that role, Paul understands…
The IMF Is Urging Governments to Adopt Regulatory and Tax Cartels to Benefit Politicians
Price fixing is illegal in the private sector, but unfortunately there are no rules against schemes by politicians to create oligopolies in order to prop up bad government policy. The latest example comes from the bureaucrats at the International Monetary Fund, who…
Class Warfare, Tax Rates, and the Laffer Curve
Obama imposed higher tax rates on the so-called rich as part of his government-run healthcare scheme, and he wants to punish success with additional tax rate increases at the end of this year. This excerpt from a New York Post column comments on how many people are…
Would You Exercise for a Free Meal?
I suspect this is a marketing gimmick, but this story I saw linked on Marginal Revolution will be a good test of incentives. A hotel is offering meal vouchers for people who “produce at least 10 watt hours of electricity” by riding an exercise bicycle….
More on Obama and Socialism
More on Obama and Socialism. I got some interesting feedback about my pseudo-defense of Obama against the accusation that he is a socialist. It was a faux defense because my goal was simply to point out that Obama is guilty of a different form of statism. For those…
The Right Way for Banks to Bail Themselves Out
The politicians are urging big taxes on banks, using rhetoric designed to trick people into thinking that this is a way to make the banks pay for their own bailouts. But a general tax on all banks simply means that well-run banks subsidize the reckless banks – a…
The Greek Bailout.
I get a lot of email asking me about Greece, especially since I don’t give the issue much attention on the blog. I am paying close attention to what’s happening, especially since Greece is a canary in the coal mine. But I generally try to avoid being…