Sweden is continuing to reap the rewards of this mixture of fiscal rectitude and pro-market reforms. GDP is projected to grow by 1.8% to 1.9% this year; headline inflation stands at 1.5%; debt-to-GDP ratio is one of the lowest in the world, at just above 35%. There are some flies in this ointment, of course:…
Adrian Wooldridge on Sweden and liberalism
Adrian Wooldridge on Sweden and liberalism
20 Jun 2026 1 Comment
in economic growth, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics Tags: Sweden
A Nordic Nightmare for AOC
19 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, economic history, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, Marxist economics, politics - USA Tags: taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and labour supply
In 2015, I wrote a column entitled “A Nordic Nightmare for Bernie Sanders.” Today, let’s do something similar, but this time I’ll explain why economic data from northernmost Europe is bad news for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I’m motivated to address the issue because I just saw this tweet about how Scandinavian-Americans are much richer than their […]
A Nordic Nightmare for AOC
Caplan-Jones UATX Debate Video
17 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, development economics, labour economics, labour supply, law and economics, liberalism, libertarianism, politics - USA Tags: economics of immigration
Here’s the full video from my recent immigration debate at UATX with Garett Jones. Coleman Hughes moderates. (A great guy, and not only did we finally meet in person for dinner; he also came to UATX karaoke!) Here are more debate details from the UATX Substack. I’ve got multiple post-debate commentary essays in my queue,…
Caplan-Jones UATX Debate Video
Watermelon Economics
16 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in development economics, fiscal policy, human capital, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, poverty and inequality, Public Choice Tags: development aid, regressive left, taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, top 1%
Remember Thomas Piketty, the pro-class-warfare economist who is infamous for shoddy analysis and who also made a fool of himself by asserting back in 2023 that Javier Milei’s election in Argentina would lead to economic disaster? Yes, that Thomas Piketty. It turns out he’s also a “watermelon,” which is the derisive term for leftists who […]
Watermelon Economics
Quotation of the Day…
15 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in economic history, history of economic thought, labour economics, labour supply, unions
Tweet… is from page 88 of Art Carden’s and Ilia Murtazasvili’s paper “W.H. Hutt: An Economist for the Twenty-First Century,” which is a chapter in 2026 book Unsung Heroes of the Market: The 24 Underrated Economists You Need to Know – a volume edited by Robert Whaples, Christopher Coyne, Gregory Robson, and Diana Thomas [original emphasis;…
Quotation of the Day…
Piketty’s Eco-Marxist Utopia: Why Degrowth and Global Redistribution Will Trap the Poor in Poverty
13 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, development economics, econometerics, economic growth, economic history, economics of climate change, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, environmentalism, fiscal policy, global warming, human capital, income redistribution, industrial organisation, international economics, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, Public Choice, public economics Tags: climate activists, climate alarmism, regressive left
The world’s poor deserve better than another utopia designed for them by the globalist intelligentsia. They deserve cheap energy, open markets, secure property rights, and the freedom to industrialise on terms they choose for themselves. That is what worked in East Asia. It is what will work in South Asia, Africa and Latin America. And…
Piketty’s Eco-Marxist Utopia: Why Degrowth and Global Redistribution Will Trap the Poor in Poverty
A weird way of slicing the stats
12 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, discrimination, econometerics, economic history, economics of education, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice
Ages ago I supervised a superb Honours thesis, which turned into a Masters, looking at the lesbian wage premium. It showed up regularly in the US data: homosexual women earned more than heterosexual women – the opposite of the pattern that obtains for men. I was curious whether the difference could in part be due to…
A weird way of slicing the stats
The population bust is with us
10 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in labour economics, labour supply, population economics Tags: ageing society, population bust
Superannuation affordability options
09 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in economic growth, fiscal policy, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, politics - New Zealand, Public Choice, public economics Tags: ageing society, economics of immigration, population bust
Lyric Waiwiri-Smith at The Spinoff asked me what I thought the options might be for dealing with rising superannuation costs. Her story’s here, along with comment from Max Rashbrooke and Shamubeel Eaqub. My most-preferred option is ongoing increases in immigration rates, coupled with shifting to CPI-indexation of super benefits and indexing the age of eligibility to healthy…
Superannuation affordability options
Abolishing HR
05 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in entrepreneurship, human capital, labour economics, labour supply, managerial economics, organisational economics, personnel economics
News.com.au reports: A high-profile tech CEO has sparked debate after revealing he quietly axed his entire human resources department earlier this year. Ryan Breslow, CEO of Bolt Financial, claims the HR team at the fintech firm was “creating problems that didn’t exist” and fostering a culture of complaining rather than productivity. “The problems disappeared when…
Abolishing HR
My Opening Statement for the UATX Caplan-Jones Immigration Rematch
04 Jun 2026 Leave a comment
in liberalism, libertarianism, politics - USA, labour economics, development economics, applied price theory, labour supply, growth disasters Tags: economics of immigration
Garett Jones is the best critic of immigration in all of social science. In fact, it’s not even close. To the best of my knowledge, he is the only such critic who has seriously tried to show that the social costs of immigration are even more astronomical than the social benefits of immigration. In fact,…
My Opening Statement for the UATX Caplan-Jones Immigration Rematch
Europe’s War on Wealth
29 May 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, economic history, fiscal policy, income redistribution, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, occupational choice, P.T. Bauer, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, public economics Tags: European Union
Given the relative economic weakness that plagues most European nations (documented here, here, here, here, and here), a top priority for policy makers should be to improve incentives for wealth creation. But that assumes politicians care about the prosperity of citizens. Based on a new report from the European Commission, the answer is no. Instead of […]
Europe’s War on Wealth
Liberal Economists Score an Own Goal Against Bezos
25 May 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, fiscal policy, James Buchanan, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, Public Choice, public economics
Jeff Bezos tweeted: Yes, the United States has the most progressive tax system in the world. The top 1% pay 40% of taxes, the bottom 50% pay 3% of taxes. We can make it even more progressive by zeroing out taxes on the bottom half. It’s a small amount of the total tax revenue but…
Liberal Economists Score an Own Goal Against Bezos
The (Amusingly) Destructive Economics of Wealth Taxation
24 May 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, entrepreneurship, fiscal policy, human capital, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, public economics Tags: taxation and entrepreneurship, taxation and investment, taxation and labour supply
I’ve shared several columns (here, here, here, here, and here) reviewing scholarly research on the harmful economic impact of wealth taxation. From now on, however, I think I’ll simply share this clever video from the folks at Reason. The video uses humor to make very important points about how a wealth tax would diminish incentives […]
The (Amusingly) Destructive Economics of Wealth Taxation
The AI Jobs Panic Comes to Sacramento
23 May 2026 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic growth, entrepreneurship, human capital, industrial organisation, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, market efficiency, occupational choice, survivor principle, theory of the firm
California has seen the future of work, and Sacramento’s first instinct is to convene 14 task forces about it. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-6-26 today, setting California’s workforce agencies in motion on directives involving research reviews, revisions to the state’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, studies of new safety-net programs, a…
The AI Jobs Panic Comes to Sacramento
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments