The per capita GDP for the combined 27 countries of the European Union (EU-27) is about 72% of the US level. On the other side, the average worker in EU countries puts in far fewer hours on the job than do American workers. For example, OECD data says that the average US worker put in…
Tax rates matter for work incentives. When tax rates are high, there is less incentive for people to work. They may pass up additional work and choose leisure time instead. However, it isn’t just taxes that matter. It is the loss of other entitlements as well. All of these are bound up in what is…
Several good friends warned me not to publish Don’t Be a Feminist. I appreciate their concern, but I’m glad I kept my own counsel. Here’s my interview with Chris Williamson on the book and beyond. Apparently he’s kind of a big deal…
TweetWant to get a few hours’ worth of solid learning in less than 35 enjoyable minutes? Listen to my Mercatus Center colleague David Beckworth’s podcast (from October 2022) with George Selgin on the New Deal. Seriously. It will be 34-plus minutes very well spent. George’s book – False Dawn – is forthcoming from the University…
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column. The opener is this: Can a single self-published paper really refute decades of work by three famous economists? If the paper is the modestly titled “Income Inequality in the United States: Using Tax Data to Measure Long-Term Trends,” then the answer — with qualifications — is yes. And…
This gem of a story is about how one Aussie university went to the logical endpoint of the diversity-trumps-merit controversy: Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane is apparently about to hire solely on the basis of diversity, and has erased any mention of the word “merit” in its hiring policy. This of course is ridiculous, […]
The Domestic Purposes Benefit has been variously described as a “disaster” (David McLoughlin 1995), an “economic lifeline” (Jane Kelsey 1995) and “an unfortunate experiment” (Muriel Newman 2009).Its effect on family formation can never be definitively ascertained. But the growth of the sole parent family dependent on welfare has correlated with more poverty, more child abuse…
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% […]
A year ago, Jonah Franks, who runs Public Intellectuals for Charity, organized a debate between me and Peter Singer on “Do the rich pay their fair share?” I already posted my opening statement, my reflections on the debate, along with two follow-ups on Singer’s “Noble Lie.” The debate video itself, however, was gated for paying…
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.
In Hume’s spirit, I will attempt to serve as an ambassador from my world of economics, and help in “finding topics of conversation fit for the entertainment of rational creatures.”
“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.
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