Category Archives: Economy

Organizing Healthcare

The important question for healthcare, as is true for the economy as a whole, is how to organize and regulate healthcare. Generally, we can organize around competitive markets or through a system directed by a central authority. History proves that competition is the superior choice, … Continue reading

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Lip Service From The WSJ

The editors of the WSJ are quick to praise markets and competition. But when push comes to shove, when either DOJ or FTC actually challenges the anticompetitive practices of a dominant firm or combination of firms, the WSJ always comes down on … Continue reading

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What’s Left For Regressives?

Flush from the gay rights victory at the Supreme Court, “progressives” are now wondering what’s left for the progressive movement. Writing in Slate magazine, for example, Barry Friedman and Dahlia Lithwick offer up a laundry list of progressive causes that they be-lieve all good progressives should pursue, now … Continue reading

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Ignoring The Blue Whale In The Room

One of the unassailable facts of social life is that centrally directed economies never out-perform economies that organize collective activity through competitive markets. The “natural experiments” of the last century, some of which continue today (e.g., see the experiment on the Korean peninsula), easily prove the superiority … Continue reading

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More Insights From Wise Boy

So Wise Boy (aka Ezra Klein) is perplexed. You see, he noticed that Republicans support the idea of doing long-run estimates of the federal budget deficit, hope to secure the long border between the U.S. and Mexico, and believe that the government … Continue reading

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More Obfuscation From Ezra Klein

Wise Boy (aka Ezra Klein) is at it again:  destroying the meaning of words in the best Orwellian tradition in support of statism. Wise Boy is one of those liberals who confuses matters by calling government spending “investment” or “insurance.” And he loves to equate tax expenditure … Continue reading

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The Determined Statist akaThe Incidental Economist

The authors of the blog The Incidental Economist are thinking of changing its name and are asking readers for suggestions (mine is given below). Evidently, the primary authors have no formal economic training and so the name doesn’t “convey” what they do, … Continue reading

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Debating Wing Nuts

So liberals like Cass Sunstein of Harvard Law School think they have a way to humble  “wing nuts.” Wing nuts are people who, from the liberal perspective, disagree with the liberal “vision” of massive government. As he considers how to debate wing nuts, Sunstein finds a … Continue reading

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Catastrophic Care – Part Two

The previous post reviewed some of the problems about healthcare in America as iden-tified by David Goldhill in his recent book “Catastrophic Care.” So how does Goldhill pro-pose to fix healthcare and contain costs? First, he would require everyone to purchase health insurance, but … Continue reading

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Catastrophic Care – Part One

In his recent book “Catastrophic Care,” David Goldhill argues that the central problem with America’s healthcare system is the use of insurance to finance healthcare expen-ditures. According to Goldhill, insurance-based healthcare cannot control costs because consumers (i.e., patients) don’t directly pay for … Continue reading

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