Tag: Economics
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Wichita Business Journal: Please Explain the Wichita School Bond Impact
Mr. Heck must be relying on reporting from his own newspaper, for a few months ago it printed the article “Brooks: Bond issue possible in spring” (December 28, 2007 Wichita Business Journal) in which Brooks and Joe Johnson, head of the school district’s architectural firm Schaefer Johnson Cox Frey Architecture say that the bond issue…
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Price Controls Will Harm Iowa
In the article Price Controls Create Man-Made Disasters we learn that although the Iowa attorney general has imposed Iowa’s anti-price-gouging rule (Price-gougers beware, Attorney General says), the likely effect will be “shortages of needed supplies, long lines, delayed repairs, and, perhaps, increased incivility.” The price system is very good at allocating scarce resources. That’s certainly…
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Wichita’s Galichia provides what government health care doesn’t
A recent editorial in The Wichita Eagle (Dr. Bill Roy: Universal care is most economic, efficient) contains several mistaken impressions. One may be disproved by recent developments in Wichita.
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Wichita School Bond Issue: Is Economic Impact Real?
I wrote to Janet Harrah, the lead author of this report, with some questions. One of her responses, not to any particular question I asked but just by way of general explanation, was this: “These studies are designed to estimate the impact of expenditures for a particular activity. These studies are not designed to determine…
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A Believer in Good Government Programs
A Mr. Greg Abbott of Clearwater, Kansas makes the case in the June 13, 2008 Wichita Eagle that there are many good government programs: the interstate highway system, the post office, the air traffic control system, police and fire departments, etc. I believe the writer makes a huge error in logic by assuming that because…
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Tax Abatements in Wichita
A few months ago I spoke before this council asking that you not grant a tax abatement. At that time I was told that granting a property tax abatement doesn’t have any impact on City of Wichita spending. I found this quite remarkable, that new homes and buildings can be built but not consume any…
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Investment in Wichita Public Schools
A letter writer in the April 27, 2008 Wichita Eagle makes the case that investment in USD 259 (the Wichita, Kansas public school district) has a good return. By way of comparison, the writer argues that the Wichita airport, having been built with public funds, represents “an investment return.” Whether it represents a good return…
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Wichita school bond issue economic fallacy
I have no doubt that the school bond issue in 2000 was a tremendous benefit to Mr. Johnson’s firm. I’m sure Superintendent Brooks, in some way that I don’t understand, benefited from the bond issue, too. As to the rest of the community, however, the benefit claimed by these two men doesn’t exist. It never…
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Problem of low wages not easily solved
The great appeal of a higher minimum wage mandated by an act of the legislature is that it seems like a wonderfully magical way to increase the wellbeing of low-wage workers. Those who were earning less than the new lawful wage and keep their jobs after the increase are happy. They are grateful to the…
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The Candlemaker’s Petition
You are on the right track. You reject abstract theories and little regard for abundance and low prices. You concern yourselves mainly with the fate of the producer. You wish to free him from foreign competition, that is, to reserve the domestic market for domestic industry.
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Henry Hazlitt explains Frederic Bastiat, or, a broken window really hurts no matter what the New York Times says
This simple lesson from Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson explains so much, yet so little people realize and apply the truths explained here. Even trained economists like Paul Krugman, writing in The New York Times, fail to recognize the truth of Bastiat’s lesson as explained by Hazlitt when he remarked that “the terror attack…
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The Shine Is Off Corn Ethanol
Our economy is so intertwined and interdependent that it is impossible for the government to guide it in any direction without setting off a long chain of consequences. This is another example of the folly of centralized economic planning.