Juliette Sellgren discusses the 14th amendment with Randy Barnett.
And yet, we continue to believe that somehow, this time, industrial policy will work better. You even hear conservatives make arguments like, “It works in China, so we have to do the same.” It’s as if some people are convinced that the problems that have plagued past and current central-planning efforts in the U.S. government don’t exist in China. But the truth is that China’s successes may not look as good relative to the U.S. if you look closely at the data and facts. Also, the U.S. private sector may not even be as deficient at R&D investments as some believe.
My Mercatus Center colleague Adam Thierer reviews the history of industrial policy in Japan. A slice:
Perhaps most notable in this regard was the Japanese government’s own admission that the MITI model had not worked as well as planned. A 2000 report by the Policy Research Institute within Japan’s Ministry of Finance concluded that “the Japanese model was not the source of Japanese competitiveness but the cause of our failure.” MITI was renamed the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry at about the same time, and its mission shifted more toward market-oriented reforms.
Yesterday (June 29th) was the 220th anniversary of the birth of Bastiat. Mark Perry celebrated!
Also from Mark Perry is this new take on the devastating effects of minimum wages. Here’s his opening:
I was alerted by UC-Irvine economics professor Richard McKenzie to the recent article “The minimum wage paradox” by Craig Richardson, BB&T Distinguished Professor of Economics at Winston-Salem University and founding director of the university’s Center for the Study of Economic Mobility (CSEM). Professor McKenzie commented that Richardson’s minimum wage analysis is “one of the few new takes on the minimum wage in thirty years.” Specifically, Richardson finds that even a 107% increase in the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 an hour “may barely change the lives of low-wage workers who are currently drawing social benefits such as food stamps (SNAP benefits), child care, and/or housing assistance.”
George Will decries Amtrak subsidies. A slice:
A hidden subsidy to Amtrak is the law giving it priority over freight trains on tracks privately owned by freight railroads — more than 70 percent of Amtrak miles are on such tracks. If the increased preference for Amtrak, which Biden proposes, causes freight rail to lose business to trucks, which haul tonnage with much higher carbon emissions than freight trains, this will increase Amtrak’s environmental damage.
Richard Ebeling defends F.A. Hayek from the slandering of “Progressives’.“
