David Henderson challenges Rob Schneider’s case for military conscription.
Mike Munger exposes the faulty reasoning of today’s critics of Milton Friedman. A slice:
Friedman’s economic model has worked everywhere it has been tried. The idea that this history of consistent success is now outdated is at odds with both history and logic.
If nothing else, he lives as a perfect bogeyman for the American left, which blames him for everything from neo-liberalism to designing authoritarian regimes all over the world.
Andrew Langer is none-too-impressed with J.D. Vance’s limp grasp of markets and American history. Two slices:
Vice President JD Vance recently told podcast host Michael Knowles that American conservatism has moved beyond Milton Friedman. Economic policy on the right, he said, is now “much more Alexander Hamilton,” a change he called “obviously a good thing.” Hamiltonianism, he predicted, “will dominate American conservative economic thinking for the future.” This was a deliberate endorsement of a post-laissez-faire economic philosophy built around government-directed development.
Mr. Vance’s justification is as consequential as his conclusion. Friedman’s ideas, he said, made more sense in the 1980s because America still possessed “a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity.” Laissez-faire economics operating with “Christian guardrails on everything,” he argued, is different from laissez-faire economics in today’s secular, globalized culture.
That claim confuses the moral freedom of individuals with a particular religious or institutional order. Markets don’t require comprehensive Christian guardrails. They require individual liberty, property rights, honest dealing, enforceable contracts and equal rules against force and fraud. These principles are compatible with Christianity, but they aren’t exclusively Christian. They allow people of different faiths—and no faith—to cooperate peacefully without agreeing on theology or a common conception of the good.
The market isn’t a moral authority standing above society. It is the accumulated result of human beings freely choosing to work, create, buy, sell, save and invest.
Mr. Vance also caricatures Friedman’s legacy by implying that laissez-faire elevates economic development above human dignity. Friedman’s case for markets was moral as well as material. Voluntary exchange allows people with different values and objectives to cooperate without forcing them into a single national plan. Dispersed economic power leaves people, families and communities free to pursue their own understandings of a good life. Concentrating economic and political power threatens prosperity and liberty.
The economy isn’t an independent machine that government must direct toward human flourishing. “The economy” is people—millions of them pursuing better lives through work, invention, exchange and cooperation. Human flourishing doesn’t result when officials subordinate this activity to their preferred social vision. It occurs when people possess the liberty to develop their talents, support their families, serve their neighbors and build institutions reflecting their commitments.
Mr. Vance’s invocation of Hamilton obscures a fundamental disagreement extending back to the founding. Hamilton was a great statesman, but his political economy wasn’t the uncontested expression of American republicanism. He favored energetic national power, executive authority, public debt, a national bank, protective tariffs, manufacturing subsidies and government-led development.
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People don’t flourish because government determines how the economy should serve them. When people are free to pursue better lives, flourishing follows. A free society benefits from strong moral institutions—but neither markets nor liberty depends on government to impose them.
The U.S. national debt just crossed the $40 trillion threshold, doubling in less than a decade. Washington politicians have responded with their favorite fiscal game: blaming the other party. Democrats say Republican tax cuts are the culprit. Republicans say Democratic spending is the root cause. But both parties are responsible, with both hiding behind a lie of omission. And if we let them, they’ll keep driving us into the same wall together.
Sen. Patty Murray (D–Wash.) recently called Republican tax cuts “the single biggest driver” of the debt across the last 25 years. The number uses an unrealistic 2001 baseline that projected endless surpluses, as if the late-1990s revenue windfall would last forever. The Brookings Institution’s Jessica Riedl makes a more honest comparison by lining up the actual budget in 2000 against 2026. Tax cuts have reduced revenue by roughly 2 percent of gross domestic product. Spending rose by 5.7 percent, nearly three times as much.
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Tax cuts can be great, especially when structured to move us toward a better overall tax code. But they are not free and often do not pay for themselves, largely because they come with lots of nonproductive handouts to special interests.
Yet the fact of the matter is that despite every tax cut since 2001, revenue today sits near its long-run average as a share of the gross domestic product (GDP). With spending climbing nearly six points, we know exactly where the problem lies.
We examine whether occupational licensing improves service quality and safety using trip-level Uber data that include driver ratings and telematics-based measures of driving behavior. Exploiting quasi-random assignment from proximity-based dispatch, we compare trips served by licensed and unlicensed drivers in two settings: a cross-border comparison between New York City and New Jersey, and a deregulation event in Houston. Across settings and specifications, including instrumental variable estimates, we find no consistent evidence that licensing improves consumer outcomes. In Houston, post-deregulation entrants are indistinguishable from previously licensed drivers on ratings and driving behavior, despite differing markedly in experience and age.
“Another potential headache for US data centers — Trump tariffs.” (HT Scott Lincicome)
