Tag: Economics
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Economic fallacy supports arts in Wichita
Recently two editorials appeared in The Wichita Eagle promoting government spending on the arts because it does wonderful things for the local economy. The writers are Rhonda Holman and Joan Cole, who is chairwoman of the Arts Council. I read the study that these local writers relied on. The single greatest defect in this study…
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I, Pencil: A Most Important Story
I, Pencil is one of the most important and influential writings that explain the necessity for limited government. A simple object that we may not give much throught to, the story of the pencil illustrates the importance of markets, and the impossibility of centralized economic planning.
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Hillary Clinton and Milton Friedman: The Contrast
“The unfettered free market has been the most radically destructive force in American life in the last generation.” — First Lady Hillary Clinton on C-Span in 1996 stating her troubles with the free market “What most people really object to when they object to a free market is that it is so hard for them…
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Williams’ law: the vital role of profits
Here’s Williams’ law: Whenever the profit incentive is missing, the probability that people’s wants can be safely ignored is the greatest. If a poll were taken asking people which services they are most satisfied with and which they are most dissatisfied with, for-profit organizations (supermarkets, computer companies and video stores) would dominate the first list…
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Gambling study flawed. Ask casino workers.
Did you know that a study used to promote the economic development benefits of gambling in Wichita has casino workers paying for a large part of the social costs of gambling?
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Economic fallacy alive in Kansas at Docking Institute
There really is no free lunch. What Kansans spend on university repairs can’t be spent on something else. Should Kansas spend the money that the Regents are asking for to repair the universities? Because it fails to recognize the secondary effects of the proposed spending, the analysis put forth by the Docking Institute doesn’t answer…
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The Williams rules
The kind of rules we should have are the kind that we’d make if our worst enemy were in charge. My mother created a mini-version of such a rule. Sometimes she would ask either me or my sister to evenly divide the last piece of cake or pie to share between us. More times than…
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How To Judge the Worth of Ethanol
From The Wall Street Journal, January 27, 2007: “Ethanol gets a 51-cent a gallon domestic subsidy, and there’s another 54-cent a gallon tariff applied at the border against imported ethanol. Without those subsidies, hardly anyone would make the stuff, much less buy it — despite recent high oil prices.” Remove this subsidy and the tariff.…
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Denouncing “Greed”
Today there are adults — including educated adults — who explain multimillion-dollar corporate executives’ salaries as being due to “greed.” Think about it: I could become so greedy that I wanted a fortune twice the size of Bill Gates’ — but this greed would not increase my income by one cent. …One of the reasons…
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Preserve farmland at what cost?
There are two areas in which I believe this writer is mistaken. First, if the transaction between developer and farmer was voluntary, each is better off than they were before. The developer (and by extension the people he hopes to sell houses to) valued the land more than the farmer did. Otherwise, why would the…
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Minimum wage price controls hurt Kansas
This article presents compelling evidence that raising the minimum wage is not in the best interests of low-wage workers.
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Unintended but foreseeable harms of the minimum wage
Understanding the minimum wage, and why an increase will be harmful to those it is meant to help, requires thinking beyond stage one.