Because she and I were unable to come to an agreement, I had a follow-up call with [TED head Chris] Anderson. On that call, he conceded that his employees’ anger stemmed from political bias, but nevertheless asked me to agree to an atypical release strategy: TED would release the debate and the talk as separate videos, but at the same time. He sold this idea to me as a way to amplify my talk—as if this atypical release strategy were conceived for my benefit. That made little sense to me. The reality, I told him, was that these nonstandard release strategies were intended not to amplify my message but to dilute it. After all, the whole genesis of this debacle was the fact that certain TED staffers wanted to nix my talk altogether—and Anderson feared an internal firestorm if my talk were released normally. Clearly, the release proposals being pressed upon me were conceived in order to placate angry staffers, not in order to amplify my message.
Contrary to the “national conservative” narrative, many of the leading figures of the American Founding opposed the protectionist arguments of Hamilton and Clay.
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While Clay undoubtedly gave rise to a protectionist or “neo‐mercantilist” strain of economic arguments in the United States, his position was heavily contested from the moment he announced it on the Senate floor in 1824. Protectionism certainly aided beneficiary industries, but it also spread the burden of higher prices to consumers at large and to the political system through widespread public corruption. Contrary to national conservatives’ claims, the empirical link between tariffs and 19th‐century economic development is weak—a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning augmented by bad statistics and tendentious historical narratives. Their account also overlooks the numerous instances in which tariff protectionism fomented diplomatic and constitutional crises, triggered international retaliation, and hindered American economic development.
Jay Nordlinger praises Scott Lincicome and Cato for the “Defending Globalization” project. Two slices:
Scott Lincicome and Cato have embarked on a defense of globalization: here. He and I have recorded a Q&A podcast about this and other issues: here.
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Phil Gramm once told WFB [William F. Buckley] that it was risky, at best, for a politician to bring up free trade on the stump. Why? (Remember, Gramm is an economist, who was a professor before entering politics.) Free trade benefits almost everyone, Gramm explained — and the beneficiaries don’t know it. Free trade harms a few, and they all know it. Therefore, there was little percentage for a politician in talkin’ trade. (At least in its favor.)
Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn endorse Reagan’s economic prescriptions. Two slices:
President Trump’s most dynamic prescriptions were pretty much out of the Reagan playbook: tax cuts so that the benefits of work and investment flowed to the worker or investor, and regulatory rollback to make the economy more productive and a better place to invest. You might say it was Reaganism that gave the Trump economy its ooomph.
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But as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie points out, it is Joe Biden’s policy of “hand’s off” that really betrays American workers. Surely Reagan’s instinct would be to see if introducing private accounts might be part of a better deal. And he would ask opponents who enjoy private retirement accounts themselves why they think mediocre government returns on investment are good enough for everyone else.
Ditto for trade. Mr. Trump seems to regard trade as a zero-sum proposition, and certainly Reagan made some deals with the devil on tariffs. But never to create an economy where government favored some industries over others. Today he would be telling striking UAW members that though Mr. Biden claims to be their friend, he is killing their jobs with the Green New Deal—by putting the cars they build on the road to extinction.
Boston Globe columnist reports on a recent inartful heist in Denmark. Here’s his conclusion:
[Jens] Haaning says that keeping the money he was supposed to repay goes to the artistic essence of “Take the Money and Run.” Whether he will fork over the money or accept the penalty for refusing to do so is still an open question. A more pertinent question is whether the art world will ever tire of all the grifting and return, at long last, to the standards of craft and intelligence it once prized so highly.
Here’s the abstract of a new paper by Michael Strain, Glenn Hubbard, and Harry Holzer:
During the 2021 pandemic year, the generosity of Unemployment Insurance benefits was expanded (Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation [FPUC]) and eligibility for benefits was broadened (Pandemic Unemployment Assistance [PUA]). These two programs were set to expire in September 2021. In June 2021, 18 states exited both FPUC and PUA and three states exited FPUC (but not PUA). Using Current Population Survey data and a wide range of estimation methods, we find that the flow of unemployed workers into employment increased by around two-thirds following early exit among prime-age workers. We also find evidence of reductions in state-level unemployment rates, increases in employment-populations ratios, and reductions in the share of households that had no difficulty meeting expenses.
When governments get basic scientific facts wrong & implement discriminatory policies based on this wrong understanding, independent scientists are the check on gov’t abuse.
Authoritarian governments respond by shutting down the printing presses employed by those scientists.
