Category Archives: Economical Musings

…are frickin’ huuuuge! The gains from eliminating migration barriers dwarf—by an order of a magnitude or two—the gains from eliminating other types of barriers. For the elimination of trade policy barriers and capital flow barriers, the estimated gains amount to … Continue reading →

The debate on the previous thread, along with PPACA (or ACA, as now seems to be the increasingly common terminology) discussions at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen and elsewhere have got me thinking about the health care market. Not the … Continue reading →

American rice farmers are a little ticked off that Iraq’s Grain Board has decided to stop buying American rice. Seems the Iraqis owe it to “us.” “That’s just not right,” [Texas rice farmer Ray] Stoesser fumed. “If we’ve got some … Continue reading →

One of my favorite topics: Is the middle class disappearing? Scott Winship says, “no.” For the record, Scott Winship works at Brookings and this was published in the National Review–so let’s set aside our instinctive ideological context filters, which aren’t … Continue reading →

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with civil fraud. Oh my, what will their defenders say now? There’s been an effort among liberals to deny that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac … Continue reading →

Over at the League, Elias Isquith has a post about wealth inequality in the U.S. Down in the comments, one Lyle writes; To see how a truly free market works I encourage folks to look at the 1870/1880s in the … Continue reading →

Arnold Kling explains how he gravitated to Austrian economics. I was explaining to someone at dinner the other night that I came to Austrian economics in a very odd way. I did not study the sacred texts. I spent the … Continue reading →

Via Mark Perry, here’s a story about a California vineyard that tried to hire U.S. citizens to pick grapes. It didn’t turn out well, despite the unemployment rate in that county being over 9%. Salisbury started with 40 applicants, but … Continue reading →

From Tyler Cowen, The funny thing is this: For years, many cultural critics in and of the United States have been telling us that Americans should behave more like threshold earners. We should be less harried, more interested in nurturing … Continue reading →