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Tim Cavanaugh reports on George Selgin rightly taking Nobel laureate Eric Maskin to task for the latter’s pretense of knowledge [2]. (This exchange took place at last Thursday’s excellent Mercatus Center celebration of the 40th anniversary of Hayek’s award of the Nobel Prize.)
John Cochrane rightly takes Martin Wolf to task for the latter’s sloppy analysis of inequality [3]. A slice:
You bet “children from poor backgrounds are handicapped in completing college.” They go to terrible schools, hijacked by inner city teacher’s unions. They come from broken homes, where nobody reads to them at night. They don’t see anyone around them who is working at legal jobs. And so on. This is just the case that Kevin Murphy and others have made about the increasing skill premium.
But that’s all inequality as a symptom of other things gone wrong, and those things desperately needing fixing no matter how much the top 1% earn.
Richard Rahn rightly take tax-hikers to task [5].
GMU Econ PhD candidate Abby Hall rightly takes to task those who turn blind eyes to the reality of national-defense programs [6]: they’re government programs – and like all government programs, subject to corruption, chock-full of waste, pregnant with unintended ill-consequences, and not remotely guided by acceptable general principles. A slice:
It is particularly important for those of us concerned about liberty to recognize these issues of national defense are of particular importance. It’s the star-spangled elephant in the room. These “defense” activities, as opposed to protecting our freedoms and expanding the rights of those abroad, often have the opposite effect. They diminish the liberties they are intended to protect.