Government Centralization is the Main Problem in Today’s Financial System – David Friedman Interview
10 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
in David Friedman, law and economics
Election 2019 week 1
10 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
in defence economics, health economics, international economic law, international economics, International law, law and economics, Marxist economics, Public Choice Tags: Brexit, British politics
Groom of the Stool (Worst Jobs in History)
10 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
in economic history, labour economics, labour supply, occupational choice
English test for Immigrants? At least it isn’t Gaelic!
09 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
Australia, or, more specifically, the ever-infuriating John Howard, wants to impose a test of proficiency in English as a requirement for citizenship (he also wants to test ‘Australian Values’, but the idea is just too ludicrous to spend any more time on).
I remembered reading Mike Carlton’s take on the concept of language proficiency tests in Australian history and stumbled upon a particular case that I thought must have been a joke. Alas, it turns out to be factual.
Australia’s immigration policy while Howard’s hero, Robert Menzies was Attorney General, included a clause (section 3(a) of the Immigration Act of 1901) that immigrants and visitors could be subject to a dictation test in an unspecified European language. If you don’t believe me, here‘s a facsimile of the act itself.
This wasn’t used much, it seems, but in 1934, an anti-fascist, anti-war Czech intellectual by the name of Egon Kisch…
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Fall of the Berlin Wall: British diplomats reflect on 9 November 1989
09 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
in economic history, International law, law and economics, Marxist economics, Public Choice Tags: Berlin wall, East Germany, fall of communism
Berlin wall Border troops (Grenztruppen)
09 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
in defence economics, development economics, economic history, economics of crime, law and economics, Marxist economics Tags: East Germany, fall of communism, fall of the Berlin wall
#OTD The fall of the #BerlinWall @guardian @jeremycorbyn @SenSanders @Ocasio2018
09 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, growth disasters, Marxist economics, Public Choice Tags: East Germany, fall of communism, fall of the Berlin wall
Liberal NY Times writer condemns woke Democrats
09 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
Timothy Egan is a liberal op-ed columnist for the New York Times, and has the credentials to prove it, including a share in the Times’s Pulitzer Prize for its series “How Race is Lived in America”. (He also has a National Book Award for nonfiction for his 2009 book The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire that Saved America.)
It would be hard, then, for leftists to dismiss Egan as an alt-righter or white supremacist, though I suppose that, as he was born in 1954, he could be denigrated as a “boomer.” (That, of course, is ageism.) But I suppose they’ll try, as is always the case when somebody writes a piece like Egan’s latest for the NYT (click on the screenshot below):
The exemplar of someone who’s turned off by “insufferable wokeness” is Egan’s sister, who works cleaning toilets at Wal-Mart:
No matter how…
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The Great Escape
09 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, growth disasters, growth miracles, health economics Tags: child mortality, child poverty, infant mortality, The Great Escape
Pay slip data shows wage cuts are common
09 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, business cycles, econometerics, economic history, job search and matching, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, unemployment Tags: search and matching
Unlike @AOC, @BernieSanders only wants to give the Boston marathon bomber the right to vote
09 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: 2020 presidential election
Worried about droughts? Embrace water markets
08 Nov 2019 Leave a comment
In the last few years, California experienced a long, severe drought. It was extremely painful, but not as painful as it might have been because California has water markets that helped the water flow to those who needed it most. Strengthening and expanding water markets could have furthered reduced this pain.
Courtesy of Jose Manuel Suarez
Yet in Water Deeply, environmental activist Gary Wockner bemoans that so many environmentalists are embracing markets to resolve environmental conflicts. His critique says more about the growing schisms between environmentalists than the merits of water markets.
Wockner offers three criticisms of water markets: (1) they commoditize water; (2) he hasn’t seen a quantified analysis of whether they are successful, under a test that he has devised but does not articulate; and (3) they, along with other free market environmental reforms, are pushing environmentalists away from his preferred model of lobbying and litigation (political…
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