Bob Murphy

Author Archive

The Freedom of Contentment

A commenter here (sorry I forget who posted it) brought my attention to this wonderful sermon, by Tim Keller in 2003. I strongly encourage you to listen to it, even if you are a non-believer; there is a lot of secular wisdom here. For example, a little before the halfway point he says that the […]

A Policy Proposal That All Economic Schools of Thought Should Prefer to the Status Quo

[UPDATES in the middle and then at the end.] Once again, Nick Rowe has argued that according to the very model that Paul Krugman claims to be using–and I mean here, the full-blown model with intertemporal optimization, not the cruder IS/LM model that Krugman thinks gives surprisingly good policy recommendations, using the full-blown model as […]

Jon Stewart on Chicago vs. New York

He made the best possible case, but c’mon, New York City pizza is terrible. The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook Warning: It’s Stewart, so some bleeped-out naughty words.

Chris Koresko Wins the Internet on ObamaCare/Katrina Comparison

David R. Henderson, like me, was surprised to see Matt Yglesias suggest that the failure of ObamaCare would result in zero deaths. (In contrast, Yglesias argued, President Bush’s failure under Katrina did result in deaths.) But look at Chris Koresko’s take on the ObamaCare/Katrina analogy: Actually the whole Bush/Katrina Obama/ACA comparison looks pretty shaky. If […]

What Did Yglesias Know About Health Insurance Cancellations, And When Did He Know It?

I’m still trying to find a mea culpa where Yglesias discusses his off-the-mark predictions about how great the ObamaCare rollout would be. Nothing yet, but in the meantime I ran across this: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” That was the promise Barack Obama made to insured Americans when stumping for […]

Yglesias: Health Insurance Doesn’t Have Anything to Do With People Living or Dying

I have been trying to find out how Matt Yglesias dealt with his hilarious and confident predictions about the rollout of ObamaCare, such as this one from May 24, 2013: You heard it here first from me in April, but I want to reiterate that over the next 18 months you’re going to read a […]

My Canceled Health Insurance “Plan” Was Probably “Junk,” So No Biggie

[UPDATE below.] Remember how I had the selfishness to be upset that my health insurance plan was rendered illegal by ObamaCare? Well Jamelle Bouie at The Daily Beast explains to me why it’s not a big deal: Indeed, one reason not to jump on the GOP train of “solutions” to Obamacare’s current woes…is that the […]

Trouble Withdrawing Money From Bank Account?

I know someone who is selling a (modest) house. He is concerned that he won’t be able to take the money out of his checking account and turn it into cash. Has anybody done this recently, who would like to share the experience in the comments? To be clear, he doesn’t want to do anything […]