We know what blanket infrastructure spending looks like. When the federal government is just throwing money at the states for projects they don’t really need, there’s not going to be any urgency to spend the money in a way that benefits taxpayers.
Juliette Sellgren talks with Reason‘s Nick Gillespie.
Phil Magness and Ethan Yang talk about Critical Race Theory in a free society.
Eric Boehm rightly decries Biden’s proposed “budget.”
Peter Robinson talks with Maverick author Jason Riley about the great Thomas Sowell.
Here’s James Pethokoukis (and Michael Strain) on wealth inequality.
It’s a pity what’s becoming of the economics profession. And see also here.
Merrill Matthews explains what Joe Biden could learn by reading “I, Pencil.”
Tim Worstall shares a secret recipe for civilization. A slice:
The U.S. healthcare spending has gone from 5 percent of GDP in 1960 to 18 percent today. But not, as [Mark] Bittman seems to think, because our food is making us sick – we live longer, healthier lives now. But because the reduction of our expenditure on food allows us to spend more on health care. Or, in another but equivalent formulation, we are richer, and therefore the portions of income we spend on different things have changed. We spend more on luxury goods and less on inferior goods. However tautologous that argument is, it is still true, and one of the proofs that we are richer is that spending patterns have changed.
Living standards are better today because we can get that worn-out hip replaced and treat the diseases that killed our forebears. It’s not just that technology has advanced so that we know how to do things; it’s that progress in reducing the cost of food relative to incomes has meant that we have the economic room to be able to do these other things.
