Some Links

Tweet ^[1]

The indispensable Phil Magness catalogues some of the elementary – but quite significant – errors in interpreting economic statistics committed by people such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ed Baptist, and Carol Anderson ^[2].

Mark Perry shares a recent profile of Glenn Loury ^[3].

Is Charles Murray responsible for a rise in “poverty”? ^[4]

Jeffrey Tucker writes about the bad economic theory that motivates the U.S. government’s rules for mandating overtime pay ^[5].

Steve Hanke explains that Trump is clueless about trade ^[6]. (I pick one small nit with Steve’s excellent essay: when a country runs a trade deficit, the accompanying excess of domestic investment over domestic savings really is not a “defect,” although that is the term that is conventionally used. The term “deficit” suggests a shortfall. But the “deficit” in “trade deficit” is not a shortfall. Because the amount of capital in the world, or in any country, isn’t fixed, the excess of domestic investment over domestic savings can be – and in the U.S. is to a large extent – simply the net amount of additional investment that foreigners choose in make in the domestic economy.)

In the Wall Street Journal, Bob Greene reminds us of some of the companies of yesterday, now extinct, that helped to make today ^[7].

Here’s an interesting podcast featuring Arnold Kling ^[8].

Matt Ridley counsels realism about carbon emissions ^[9].

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