Opening statements at my Steamboat Institute debate on open borders versus Sohrab Ahmari were so brief that I failed to even finish my slideshow. Since the audience didn’t get to see the whole thing, I’m sharing it here. Remember: This is the only immigration debate I’ve ever done where the resolution was explicitly about “benefit…
Chris Morrison provides the analysis in his Daily Sceptic article ONS Reveals the Pitiful Number of New Green Jobs Being Created in the U.K. Economy. Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images. The problem with the green U.K. economy, and its associated destruction of the hydrocarbon environment, is that there are very few […]
Bryan Caplan will feel vindicated: This paper asks whether universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) raises parents’ earnings and how much these earnings effects matter for evaluating the economic returns to UPK programs. Using a randomized lottery design, we estimate the effects of enrolling in a full-day UPK program in New Haven, Connecticut on parents’ labor market outcomes […]
Byrne Hobart writes to me: One of the purposes of inheritance taxes is to avoid compounding intergenerational wealth. But The Missing Billionaires points out that if all of America’s millionaires had put their money in broad market indices in 1900, their heirs would number 16,000 billionaires, even accounting for taxes, splitting estates among multiple children, etc. So […]
The UK’s Orwellian sounding Equality Act 2010 is strikingly Marxist. It demands equal pay for work of equal value where these are defined as follows: A’s work is equal to that of B if it is like B’s work, rated as equivalent to B’s work, or of equal value to B’s work. A’s work is […]
By Eric Pichet, here is the abstract: Despite attempts to ‘unwind’ the Impôt de Solidarité sur la Fortune (‘Solidarity Wealth Tax,’ the French wealth tax) during the last legislature (2002-2007), ISF yields had soared by 2006, jumping from €2.5 billion in 2002 to €3.6 billion. Analysis of the economic consequences of this ISF wealth tax […]
I’m a big fan of tax competition. I cheer when jobs, investment, and people (or even booze) move from high-tax jurisdictions to low-tax jurisdictions. This increases the rewards for good policy and also increases the punishment for bad policy. Given my interest in the topic, I obviously can’t resist sharing this chart, which shows the […]
This paper studies the long-run effects of slavery and restrictive Jim Crow institutions on Black Americans’ economic outcomes. We track individual-level census records of each Black family from 1850 to 1940, and extend our analysis to neighborhood-level outcomes in 2000 and surname-based outcomes in 2023. We show that Black families whose ancestors were enslaved until […]
I’ve written many times about how Americans are much richer than Europeans. And I’ve also written many times that the U.S. economy has been growing faster (which shouldn’t happen according to convergence theory). There’s a simple reason for America’s superior performance. The U.S. is burdened by a medium-sized welfare state and a bad tax system […]
CEO compensation at large firms is high, especially in comparison to average worker wages, sparking debates over income inequality. Critics argue that such pay packages are unfair and disproportionate to actual company performance. Proponents contend that high pay reflects productivity and is necessary to attract scarce top talent to large firms. Let’s go to the […]
Earlier this week, I was interviewed by Paul Brennan on Reality Check Radio, on New Zealand’s declining birth rate. You can listen to the interview here. We didn’t have time to go through all of the questions I was given beforehand, so I thought I would add some points here, along with some links to…
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Recent Comments