Arnold Kling praises “liberal Quakerism.”
This is why, when examining the existing empirical literature on economic freedom and human capital, particularly the work of economist Horst Feldmann, we find that more economic freedom leads (on net) to an increase in human capital. Using the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index, Feldmann found that an additional point of economic freedom increased high school enrollment rates by 33.48 to 37.98 percentage points. Another group of researchers, using data from 86 countries, confirmed that finding when they found that an additional point of economic freedom increased the rate of return on education by 0.45 percentage points. This means that freer economies were able to make human capital (and self-improvement) more enticing for workers.
In forthcoming work with Alicia Plemmons and Justin Callais, I test whether economic freedom favored intergenerational educational mobility — whether children’s educational status in adulthood is determined by their parents. The idea is that, if economic freedom is net beneficial, we should see the children of poor parents be able to acquire more human capital. We found exactly that — economic freedom is potently associated with greater educational mobility.
In conclusion, the argument in favor of state intervention in education — without which there would not be enough investment in human capital — is not particularly convincing. The case for more economic freedom, for its part, is far stronger.
To begin, economist and trade historian Douglas Irwin points out that “rather than higher tariffs causing higher growth, the relationship could be spurious: land-abundant countries relied on customs duties to raise government revenue and also enjoyed favorable growth prospects, with little link between the two.” In 19th-century America — about as land-abundant as it got — the sectors that grew the most were services and agriculture, which were not much protected by tariffs.
In addition, at the time, the United States was the net beneficiary of foreign capital investment, which resulted in the trade deficits that Mr. Trump so hates today. This inflow of global capital contributed to a burst of new technology and ideas, all put to the test in a free market.
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The noneconomic costs of tariffs were also high. Tariffs fueled corruption and other profit seeking with no real value to society. Contributing to the Cato Institute’s “Defending Globalization” project, Phillip Magness writes that “high tariff protectionism continued to attract rent-seeking interest groups. The sheer extravagance of the public corruption around tariff schedule revisions came to a head in the late 19th century, eventually leading reformers to call for the abandonment of a tariff-based revenue system.” (That’s how we got the highly distortive income tax.)
George Will warns of the “rising, nightmarish risk of biological warfare.” A slice:
In 1969, Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel Prize-winning biologist, warned that the proliferation of biological weapons would be like making “hydrogen bombs available at the supermarket.” Biological weapons confound the Cold War paradigm of deterrence because those releasing them can evade detection and hence retaliation.
GMU Econ alum Dominic Pino reflects on the Not-So-Great Society.
Dominic is also correct in his conclusion about labor unions:
Workers need to be free to choose whether to join unions precisely because unions often don’t represent their interests. They take their dues and use them for progressive politics, even when a majority of their members say they support Trump.
Eugene Scalia notes that “the economy was roaring when Biden took office.” A slice:
Of the misstatements that went unchecked in last week’s presidential debate, perhaps the most remarkable was Kamala Harris’s assertion that “Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression.” President Biden argued similarly in his debate. “Look at what . . . Trump left me,” he complained. An economy “in free fall.”
In truth, when Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris took over, the economy was rebounding faster than virtually anyone predicted. As labor secretary I projected in June 2020 that the unemployment rate—which had reached 14.7% in April—could drop below 10% by year’s end. That was considered highly optimistic. Not optimistic enough, it turned out. Unemployment in December 2020 was 6.7%.
By the time Mr. Biden signed his American Rescue Plan in March 2021, unemployment had dropped to 6.1%. By contrast, unemployment was above 8% for nearly all of Mr. Obama’s first term, and didn’t drop to 6.1% until he’d been in office more than five years. No one heard Messrs. Obama and Biden decrying the high unemployment rate when they ran for re-election in 2012.
Jacob Sullum rightly decries J.D. Vance’s baseless and ridiculous assertions about immigrants. A slice:
To justify Vance’s continued promotion of what he himself had described as “rumors” that might not be true, the candidate’s staff on Tuesday gave the Journal “a police report in which a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken by Haitian neighbors.” But “when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later—found safe in her own basement.” Kilgore, who was “wearing a Trump shirt and hat,” said “she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.”
