Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative | Hoover Institution
15 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, business cycles, economic growth, economic history, fiscal policy, global financial crisis (GFC), great depression, great recession, history of economic thought, inflation targeting, labour economics, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, monetarism, monetary economics, unemployment Tags: monetary policy
Filling in the Gaps: Next Steps for the Fiscal Theory of the Price Level
15 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, budget deficits, business cycles, econometerics, economic history, financial economics, fiscal policy, great depression, great recession, history of economic thought, inflation targeting, macroeconomics, monetarism, monetary economics Tags: monetary policy
Jennifer Burns on Milton Friedman 11/13/23
14 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, business cycles, comparative institutional analysis, econometerics, economic history, economics of education, economics of regulation, fiscal policy, great depression, history of economic thought, labour economics, liberalism, libertarianism, macroeconomics, Milton Friedman, monetarism, monetary economics Tags: monetary policy
Police versus Prisons
13 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, economics of crime, Gary Becker, history of economic thought, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, occupational choice

Here’s a remarkable graph from the Council of Economic Advisers report on incarceration and the criminal justice system. The graph shows that the United States employs many more prison guards per-capita than does the rest of the world. Given our prison population that isn’t surprising. What is surprising is that on a per-capita basis we employ 35% […]
Police versus Prisons
Washington Post removes cartoon because it was offensive—to Hamas
11 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
Both the New York Post (in an editorial-board opinion piece) and the Free Press‘s Nellie Bowles, in her TGIF column this week, report that this political cartoon appeared in the Washington Post, but then was taken down by the editor. It was drawn by Pulitzer-Prize winner Michael Ramirez: Of course it satirizes Hamas’s tactic of […]
Washington Post removes cartoon because it was offensive—to Hamas
Roland Fryer on Race, Diversity, and Affirmative Action
11 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, discrimination, economic history, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice, poverty and inequality Tags: affirmative action, racial discrimination
Why Gen Z Are Blind to Bloodthristy Hamas
09 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
Brad Polumbo explains at Newsweek An Insane Number of Gen Zers Support Hamas’s Slaughter of Innocent Israelis. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. Nearly half of young respondents said they side with the terrorist group that just earlier this month purposefully targeted and slaughtered innocent civilians. Gen Z is really not okay. […]
Why Gen Z Are Blind to Bloodthristy Hamas
Biden 2.0: Can the President Avoid the “Second-Term Curse”?
09 Nov 2023 Leave a comment

Below is my column in The Hill on a second Biden Administration and what it might entail in policy priorities. With one year before the next presidential election, the Hill asked me to project what such a second term might look like for President Joe Biden. Here is the column: Popular culture has curses that…
Biden 2.0: Can the President Avoid the “Second-Term Curse”?
Self Imposed Energy Poverty Coming to Canada
08 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, econometerics, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: Canada

Jock Finlayson describes how climate change policies are depleting Canadians’ financial means in his article Millions of Canadians May Face ‘Energy Poverty’. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. The term “energy poverty” is not yet part of day-to-day political debate in Canada, but that’s likely to change in the next few years. […]
Self Imposed Energy Poverty Coming to Canada
Willis as Minister of Finance
08 Nov 2023 Leave a comment

In this morning’s edition The Post has a double-page article about what Nicola Willis might be like as Minister of Finance. Those of my comments that were included are here My bottom line was actually very similar to that of CTU economist, Labour champion, and former political adviser to Grant Robertson who was quoted as […]
Willis as Minister of Finance
New York Times Controversy Exposes the Inherent Conflict in Advocacy Journalism
08 Nov 2023 Leave a comment

Jazmine Hughes, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, resigned this week after a conflict with her editors over signing of an anti-Israeli letter. New York Times Magazine Editor Jake Silverstein said Hughes violated the company’s policy on public protest. The incident exposes the inherent conflicts — and hypocrisy — in the shift away […]
New York Times Controversy Exposes the Inherent Conflict in Advocacy Journalism
Poland: Steps on the way to cohabitation
07 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
No sooner had I closed off the previous entry by noting that “the specific rules of any country’s semi-presidential system matter less when the election has actually resulted in an assembly majority,” than I read that President Andrzej Duda of Poland has initiated the process of government formation. He has done so by nominating a […]
Poland: Steps on the way to cohabitation
CHRIS TROTTER: Threatening “consequences”
07 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
Chris Trotter writes – “CONSEQUENCES” – it’s a word that acquires an ominous quality in the mouths of political radicals, as in: “Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from its consequences.” Or, as Te Pāti Māori’s Debbie Ngarewa Packer expressed it, when asked what would happen if the Act Party secured its referendum on […]
CHRIS TROTTER: Threatening “consequences”
Still under-policed and over-imprisoned
07 Nov 2023 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economics of bureaucracy, economics of crime, Gary Becker, labour economics, law and economics, occupational choice, Public Choice Tags: crime and punishment, criminal deterrence, law and order
A new paper, The Injustice of Under-Policing, makes a point that I have been emphasizing for many years, namely, relative to other developed countries the United States is under-policed and over-imprisoned. …the American criminal legal system is characterized by an exceptional kind of under-policing, and a heavy reliance on long prison sentences, compared to other […]
Still under-policed and over-imprisoned

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