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Understanding Imports and Exports Correctly
Trade association executives are paid to look after their member companies’ interests. Part of that responsibility is to advocate public policy positions that advance or protect those interests. Not surprisingly, such advocacy often cherry picks data and characterizes that data in ways that can generously be called suspect. Nearly always, trade association public policy positions…
Micro vs. Macro Economics and Predictions
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, regular Journal contributor, Joseph Epstein, compares modern day economists with ancient augurs. Mr. Epstein points out that there has been an infusion of politics in economics as exhibited by the fact that prominent economists who frequently appear in the media seemingly interpret economic data and make predictions in accordance…
More on the Size of a Trillion Dollars
We now finally have the answer to the age-old question of what happens when an economist and a rocket scientist step into a bar. https://www.wsj.com/opinion/who-said-pondering-the-debt-cant-be-fun-36-trillion-moon-games-c35c1174?st=2YLKsi&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
How Does the Debt Stack Up?
According to some estimates, the present value of the cost of Social Security and Medicare’s unfunded promises now stands at more than $175 trillion. Add $36 trillion more in federal debt ($26 trillion held by the public) and the total is well over $200 trillion. Even with historical economic growth and productivity increases, there is no…
A Free Market Wish List for the New Administration
[Note: This post originally appeared in American Thinker magazine on July 31, 2024] For those who believe in the instrumental and moral value of free markets, these are not good times. Both major political parties routinely exhibit ever increasing departures from limited government and economic freedom. It is therefore unrealistic for free-market advocates to expect the…
Fighting an AI “Monopoly” Where None Exists
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, former U.S. Attorney General William P. Barr complains that regulators have been “asleep at the switch over the past 25 years” with regard to oversight of Big Tech companies. (“Big Tech’s Budding AI Monopoly,” 05/28/2024.) Now Mr. Barr is especially concerned about these companies’ efforts to develop artificial intelligence.…
Liberty & Markets 