Some Links
by Don Boudreaux
on August 3, 2014
Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby is appalled by all the monuments, roads, bridges, buildings, and parks named after politicians. Why not (asks Jeff sensibly) insist that politicians buy naming rights in the same way that private citizens and firms buy naming rights to the likes of buildings on college campuses and sports stadia? This distasteful celebration of politicians is further evidence that politics attracts into its ranks the especially narcissistic, and then further feeds this narcissism. People who seek and enjoy such public adoration are not to be trusted with power over the lives of others.
Scott Sumner, in the course of making other points, emphasizes a reality that is unfortunately overlooked with surprising frequency even by many economists – and nearly always by politicians and pundits: a rising current-account deficit (or a rising “trade deficit”) for country X does not necessarily mean that any citizen or denizen of X is going further into debt.
Josh Wright, one of my colleague over in GMU Law – and now a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission – explains his recent and wise dissenting vote opposing FTC enforcement actions against Apple’s alleged unfair trade practices.
Related to Josh’s paper, see this one by Geoff Manne.
Mark Perry quotes my former professor Randy Holcombe making an excellent point about today’s continuing persecution of people who buy and sell drugs not approved by politicians.
Mish is rightly upset that free markets are often blamed for problems caused by the absence, or the suppression, of free markets.
Logan Albright and Ike Brannon, writing in the Summer 2014 issue of Regulation, review some evidence and logic on the minimum wage. (Such legislation is emphatically no good means of helping the poorest of poor workers.)
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