David Henderson shares more stunningly mistaken claims found in Joseph Stiglitz’s new book. Two slices from David’s post:
I’ve posted already a link to my critical review of Joseph Stiglitz’s 2024 book, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society. As you can see, I’m not a fan.
My review could have easily hit 5,000 words. There were so many errors and misleading statements that I didn’t get room to critique. It is, as my military students would say, a “target-rich environment.”
…..
How does Stiglitz know what people wanted? If markets weren’t delivering certain things, there’s a presumption that people didn’t want them very much. That’s not true when there are large externalities or public goods problems. But retirement benefits are private goods. A dollar you save for your retirement is a dollar I can’t have.
Social Security came along in 1935. Why is that significant? Because it was in the middle of a Depression and so it was hardly likely that people’s first instinct was to ask, “How can I save for my retirement?” rather than, “How the heck can I feed my family?” Moreover, given life expectancies at the time, it didn’t make sense for many people to put aside many resources for retirement, even absent the Great Depression. And it was telling that even though the Senate voted for the Clark Amendment to the Social Security bill, an amendment that would have allowed people to avoid Social Security if they had government-approved pension plans, it was not included in the bill. It looks as if the market was trying to provide retirement benefits.
Emma Camp reports that “when cities embrace charter schools, achievement gaps shrink.” A slice:
Cities with high charter school enrollment have consistently improved achievement for low-income students, a new report from center-left think tank the Progressive Policy Institute found. Contrary to choice-skeptical talking points, charter schools breed innovation and push local public schools to improve as well, according to the report.
The federal government’s debt is now over $28 trillion by one measurement. That’s $2 trillion more than last year and $6 trillion more than when the Biden-Harris team entered the White House. This debt stands at 100% of America’s GDP, which, other than a one-year exception at the end of World War II, is the highest ratio we’ve ever had. Unlike in 1946, today’s debt is only going to grow. Indeed, debt-to-GDP took a nearly 30-year dive to reach 23% in 1974. Today, federal debt is projected — again, under the rosiest scenarios — to rise to 166% in 30 years.
Here’s another interesting fact from Argentina’s rent controls, per the Journal: “In Buenos Aires—a city dubbed the Paris of the South for its broad avenues and cafe culture—many apartments long sat empty, with landlords preferring to keep them vacant, or lease them as vacation rentals, rather than comply with the government’s rent law.” The newspaper said that owners of many of those 200,000 units are now putting them on the market.
Unions want to raise the state minimum to increase pressure on employers to lift pay for other workers. They’ve linked up with progressive financier Joe Sanberg to bankroll Prop. 32, which would raise the minimum to $18 an hour next year and index the wage to inflation in future years.
Are they trying to keep teens out of work? Abundant economic research shows that higher minimum wages price teens out of the job market because they have the least experience and are usually the least productive. They then miss out on valuable training and lessons, such as showing up on time.
California is a case study. Its minimum wage has climbed faster than overall inflation, increasing from $12 in 2020. The higher minimum wage phased in as businesses were recovering from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s destructive Covid lockdowns, and its effect was entirely predictable: Higher youth unemployment.
A recent study by research shop Beacon Economics found that 90% of the 130,000 newly unemployed in California during the past two years were under age 35. Between the first quarters of 2022 and 2024, unemployment among those ages 16 to 19 increased to 19.2% from 10.8% in California, versus 11.9% from 10.5% nationwide.
Here’s Adam Carrington on William B. Allen on Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws.
Charles Cooke’s opinion of Kamala Harris is not ambiguous:
I think she’s a dishonest, vapid, opportunistic cipher who, in any serious country, would be considered ineligible to run a post office, let alone to manage the executive branch of federal government.
