Tweet [1]
Kerry McDonald celebrates homeschooling [2].
Most of us Americans today enjoy benefits available a quarter-century ago only to multimillionaires [3].
Here’s more good news: efforts to price low-skilled workers out of jobs with mandatory $15 minimum wages are waning [4]. (HT Warren Smith) A slice (link added):
In fact, University of California, Irvine, economist David Neumark examined more than 100 credible minimum wage studies [5] of the past two decades and found that 85% of them “found consistent evidence of job loss effects on low-skilled workers” — including lost jobs, reduced hours and closed businesses.
Mark Perry identifies a significant inconsistency in the beliefs of “diversity” advocates [6].
Richard Epstein riffs on the UAW’s recent resounding defeat in Canton, Mississippi [7]. (Among the myths that “Progressives” cling to is the notion that workers’ wages rise, not mainly because of competition among employers for workers, but because – and to the extent that – workers bargain harder with employers. Bargain as hard as you like: no employer will pay you a wage higher than the value of your marginal product.)
Erik Goepner and Trevor Thrall argue against U.S. drone strikes in the Philippines [8].
A final simple point is that American workers are paid in dollars. Devaluing the currency erodes their ability to buy the necessities and pleasures of life, whether they’re created across the street, or on the other side of the world. This obvious truth has long eluded proponents of a weak currency, who are prone to limiting their analysis to first-stage implications. They focus on the economy as an abstract blob, forgetting that it’s made up of millions of individual workers who earn dollars. Never explained by Mr. Trump or any backer of a weak currency is how eroding its value will help these people and companies.
Virginia Postrel makes a case for permissionless innovation [10].
My Mercatus Center colleagues Stefanie Haeffele-Balch and Virgil Storr plea for moderation [11].