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George Will hears the ever-louder whirring of a debt spiral.  Here’s his conclusion:

Hillsdale College’s Gary Wolfram notes that total discretionary spending — including defense — for fiscal 2019 is projected to be $1.362 trillion, which is just $381 billion more than the projected deficit. All this means trouble, unless Mr. Art of the Deal can negotiate with arithmetic, persuading it to amend its rules so that trillion-dollar deficits will not mean trillion-dollar increases in the debt.

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy helps to fuel much-needed opposition to ethanol cronyism.

GMU Econ alum Ed Stringham, appearing on a Fox News segment, wisely proposes that the term “trade deficit” be replaced by the term “goods surplus.”  (By the way, Dan Klein and I agree.)

My Mercatus Center colleague Dan Griswold writes with wisdom and knowledge about U.S. trade with China.  A slice:

Second, the U.S. delegation should remember that the $505 billion in goods Americans imported from China in 2017 are a blessing, not a problem. Although a small and declining fraction of American workers are dislocated by import competition from China, a large majority of Americans benefit as consumers. More affordable household goods such as clothing, footwear, appliances and other goods allow lower-income households to live better lives on limited budgets.

Reading a collection of Israel Kirzner’s writings, Arnold Kling is led to ask “What makes markets tick?”  A slice:

The problem of knowledge is to discover what consumers want and how to efficiently provide for those wants. Entrepreneurial competition is a process for making such discoveries. In the absence of such competition, the central planner must rely on guesswork.

My former GMU Econ undergrad student Alex Nowrasteh busts 14 myths about immigration.  A slice:

Most legal immigrants do not have access to means-tested welfare for their first five years here with few exceptions that are mostly determined on the state level and funded with state taxes.  Illegal immigrants don’t have access at all—except for emergency Medicaid.

Immigrants are less likely to use means-tested welfare benefits than similar native-born Americans.  When they do use welfare, the dollar value of benefits consumed is smaller.  If poor native-born Americans used Medicaid at the same rate and consumed the same value of benefits as poor immigrants, the program would be 42 percent smaller.

Marian Tupy explains that income equality is no measure of genuine human progress.

Here’s Bob Higgs on coming to grips with the nature of the state.

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