Source: General government – General government spending – OECD Data and Source: General government – General government revenue – OECD Data.
General government spending and general government revenue as % of US GDP since 1970
12 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, economic history, fiscal policy, politics - USA, public economics Tags: growth of government, size of government
Live from the moon in @BernieSanders good old days
12 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of media and culture, politics - USA
Solution aversion and the anti-science Left
11 Mar 2016 1 Comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, health economics, law and economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice Tags: antiscience left, climate alarmism, geo-engineering, GMOs, growth of knowledge, gun control, motivated reasoning, nuclear power, political persuasion, solar power, solution aversion, wind power
Climate science is the latest manifestation of solution aversion: denying a problem because it has a costly solution. The Right does this on climate science, the Left does it on gun control, GMOs, and plenty more. Cass Sunstein explains:
It is often said that people who don’t want to solve the problem of climate change reject the underlying science, and hence don’t think there’s any problem to solve.
But consider a different possibility: Because they reject the proposed solution, they dismiss the science. If this is right, our whole picture of the politics of climate change is off.
Some psychologists wasted grant money on lab experiments to show that people that think the solution to a problem is costly tend to rubbish every aspect of the argument. Any politician will tell you you do not concede anything. Sunstein again:
Campbell and Kay asked the participants whether they agreed with the IPCC. And in both, about 80 percent of Democrats did agree; the policy solutions made no difference.
Republicans, in contrast, were far more likely to agree with the IPCC when the proposed solution didn’t involve regulatory restrictions…
Here, then, is powerful evidence that many people (of course not all) who purport to be skeptical about climate science are motivated by their hostility to costly regulation.
The Left is equally prone to motivated readings. For example, it was found that those on the left are much more concerned about home invasions when gun control can reduce them rather than increase them.
The Left picks and chooses which scientific consensus as it accepts. The overwhelming consensus among researchers is biotech crops are safe for humans and the environment. This is a conclusion that is rejected by the very environmentalist organisations that loudly insist on the policy relevance of the scientific consensus on global warming.
Previously the precautionary principle was used to introduce doubt when there was no doubt. But when climate science turned in their favour, environmentalists wanted public policy to be based on the latest science.
The Right is welcoming of the science of nuclear energy or geo-engineering. The Left rejects it point-blank. Their refusal to consider nuclear energy as a solution to global warming is a classic example of solution aversion. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Monopolies and patents can breed deadweight loss and market inefficiencies
11 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, law and economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, property rights Tags: intellectual monopolies, patents and copyright
@BernieSanders there is no other side to Cuba – a totalitarian dictatorship
10 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in development economics, liberalism, Marxist economics, politics - USA
The Scandinavian welfare states are mooching off the USA
10 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, entrepreneurship, politics - USA, public economics
The welfare states in Scandinavia do not make their societies any less unequal than most other welfare states once you take into account taxes and transfers – after-tax redistributions.
@BernieSanders and @realdonaldtrump trade in fear and blame
08 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, politics - USA, Public Choice, television
How Michael Bloomberg thought he would go against Sanders, Trump and Clinton
08 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, politics - USA
The enduring lie that George W Bush lied about Saddam’s WMD
08 Mar 2016 3 Comments
in defence economics, politics - USA
The renegade left so hates George W Bush that it could not bring itself to make the most obvious argument against invading Iraq. That argument was the one I made at the time.
It is the height of folly to attack a country with weapons of mass destruction with the intent of conquering it. That intent of conquest and regime change gives the other side every incentive to use their weapons of mass destruction if only in an act of desperation. The whole purpose of weapons of mass destruction is to deter invasions.
Rather than concede the other side’s argument and use it against them, the renegade left preferred every other argument, most of which bolstered the case for invasion.
The most obvious of these was more weapons inspections by the UN instead of invasion. If there is a need for more weapons inspections, there must be some WMD weapons to find. The UN had 12 years to find these and still cannot find them all.
What was the point of the UN inspections and the renegade left calling for the inspections to continue as an alternative to invading in 2003 unless they expected to find more evidence of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons?
The reality is Saddam played a fine game of bluff. He destroyed his WMD capability early after the first Iraq war. He could not be afforded be found with WMDs.
Saddam then tricked everybody into believing that he still had weapons of mass destruction as a way of projecting strength, especially to regional rivals.
It is also the case that if the UN inspections stopped, Saddam would have resumed his WMD armament program.
It is not possible to stop countries from developing WMDs. You can deter them from using them. Far more volatile characters in Russia and China in the 50s and 60s were deterred from using nuclear weapons.
This @amprog conservative antipoverty dictionary does not add up
08 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, labour economics, politics - USA, poverty and inequality, Public Choice, welfare reform Tags: 1996 US welfare reforms, pessimism bias, social insurance, welfare state
From @EugeneSteuerle: Combined tax rates and creating a 21st century social welfare budget tpc.io/1GCdrYF http://t.co/aNRPqz5gAc—
Tax Policy Center (@TaxPolicyCenter) June 28, 2015
The only alternative offered by the Centre for American Progress is send them on a course. This response, which is the standard policy response to any labour market crisis, will not solve poverty, mush less inequality.
Will more education decrease inequality? A simulation provided an answer. nyti.ms/1xw5m9W http://t.co/paQp19BEWc—
The Upshot (@UpshotNYT) March 31, 2015
Mentally ill shot by US police by threat level: January – February 2016
07 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of crime, health economics, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: crime and punishment, mental illness, police killings, the and order
Unfortunately for all concerned, most of the mentally ill shot this month by police was the result of an impossible dilemma. They were either attacking police or were armed.
Source: Investigation: People shot and killed by police this year – Washington Post.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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