Bob Murphy

Author Archive

The US Chamber’s Analysis of (Hypothetical) Power Plant Rule

Last week the US Chamber of Commerce issued a report it had commissioned, which looked at the impact of a 40% reduction in US power plant emissions, relative to 2005 levels, by the year 2030. (That was a reasonable guess as to the Administration’s actual policy, which today was announced at 30%.) In my latest […]

Slavery and Reparations

My latest Mises Canada post. I make the standard point (i.e. that slavery and other racist institutions hurt white people too, on average), then make a point I haven’t seen others make regarding the latest call for reparations: A recent essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates makes the case for reparations to be paid to black Americans. The subtitle […]

H8ers Gonna H8

This might strike some (most?) of you as a “no kidding, Murphy” post, but maybe it will click with a few of you. If I can help just one reader… On social media it’s fun to refer to implacable critics as “haters,” and the common explanation for their behavior is, “Haters gonna hate.” But I […]

Spitznagel Snaps

Whoa, when he’s not taking calls from Dan Aykroyd, Eric Spitznagel goes off on people on Twitter. To get my Austrian fan base to read Eric’s NYT piece, I tweeted out: This amused Eric (I’m using first names not because we’re buds, but because I don’t want you to confuse him with Mark the investor) […]

Yawn Two More Experts on Growth and Inequality Say Piketty Is Totally Wrong

Steve Landsburg links to this Note by Krussell and Smith on Piketty. These guys are experts in this field; for example here’s one of their joint papers on wealth and income inequality in the JPE. Short version of their current Note: Like Larry Summers, they claim that once you account for depreciation, Piketty’s whole case […]

Mark Spitznagel Uses a Chokehold to Teach His Brother About Mises

OK not quite. But some of you will find this NYT magazine story by Eric Spitznagel cute. (Mark Spitznagel is the author of The Dao of Capital, for which I was a consultant on the chapters dealing with Austrian theory.) Some excerpts: For the last four years, my brother and his family lived in a […]

Ellsberg vs Kerry on Snowden

I didn’t know some of the legal facts Daniel Ellsberg relays in this piece: As I know from my own case, even Snowden’s own testimony on the stand would be gagged by government objections and the (arguably unconstitutional) nature of his charges. That was my own experience in court, as the first American to be […]

Potpourri

==> BusinessWeek explains why the 1% (annualized) drop in GDP in the first quarter is good news for the economy. Hint: it involves inventories. Oh boy. ==> Be careful, this article says the government is reporting that “food price inflation” is running at a 22% annual rate, YTD. But no, if you click the link […]