Bob Murphy

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==> Commenter Keshav pointed to this 2013 Steve Landsburg post in which he anticipated the spirit of my recent FEE article. I definitely knew that Landsburg was the first person I had read making the point about minimum wage burdening a small group (employers) to achieve a social goal (helping unskilled workers) instead of society […]

Is This a Good Way to Help the Downtrodden?

My latest article at FEE poses some hypotheticals: Or consider families who adopt children from war-torn regions. These actions, though seemingly noble, are clearly a drop in the bucket, with hundreds of thousands of orphans left behind. What if the government passed a law saying that US families were only allowed to adopt foreign children […]

Scott Sumner: “I’ll Be Making All the Ironic Jokes Around Here, Thanks”

Oh Scott, why do you vex me so? In the midst of an EconLog post, Scott had this throwaway line (in my bold): I first got into blogging in 2009 out of frustration over Fed policy. The US obviously had a huge demand shortfall, and the Fed wasn’t doing enough to address the problem. Indeed […]

Chinese Stock Market Crashing

Details here. It’s down about 25% in the last two weeks, and 11% in the last two days. Meanwhile, Scott Sumner is running victory laps, over those broken records who called it a “bubble” but didn’t give the precise timing. (See the P.P.S. in his post.)

Bias in the Published Estimates of Social Cost of Carbon

This is a bit technical, but if you care about the climate change policy debate, you should try to get through it. I made it as easy as possible.

Chris Tomlin Mellows Out With Live “Indescribable”

This is a big hit for this guy, but this live version is more mellow than his standard one.

Quick Comment on SSM and I’ll Move On

If you want to see my thoughts, see FB. I want to make one quick comment here, but first, watch Obama: I am not shocked by libertarians saying, “On balance, I am glad this happened, though I totally understand people who are alarmed that consolidated federal power will end up destroying any prospects for liberty […]

An Even More Damning Gruber Clip on State Exchanges

OK, this one is pretty clear. There is no ambiguity about a “federal backstop” and what that might mean. (Thanks to the honorable Keshav for passing this along, even though he disagrees with me.) It is now pretty obvious to me that Gruber thought the bill would deny tax credits to people in states where exchanges […]