Some Links

Matt Ridley points to evidence that free markets make us nicer.

Mark Perry wonders if restaurants that charge during dinner hours higher prices than they charge during lunchtime are price gougers.

Pierre Lemieux tackles the objection to free trade that runs as follows: ‘You can’t benefit from free trade if you don’t have a job.’

Here’s my Mercatus Center colleague Dan Griswold on the recent shrinkage of the U.S. trade deficit and the recent disappointing job numbers.

Dan Ikenson laments the ‘trade terrorism’ that is protectionism. A slice:

The U.S. trade laws are a form of economic terrorism. They are deployed unexpectedly and with stealth; they cripple their intended targets, while generating enormous amounts of collateral damage to other companies, industries and jobs; and they cast a long shadow of uncertainty over the costs and conditions of operating in the market prospectively.

Ryan Bourne reports on one way that Shake Shack is responding to minimum wages. (It’s not good news for low-skilled workers.)

My intrepid Mercatus Center colleague Veronique de Rugy is rightly critical of some bad, Keynesian-edition arguments for tax reform.

In this interview, my colleague Dick Wagner remembers the real James Buchanan.