Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Potpourri

Some of these have been sitting on my browser for so long, they started paying rent… FORGOT IN INITIAL POST: This YouTube video of Superman vs. the Hulk is hilarious. I’m not talking about the video itself, which you don’t even need to watch. I’m talking about the comments. I scrolled through five pages of […]

Federal Government Outlays and Receipts as % of Nominal GDP

Here you go kids: So as I exclaimed in an earlier post, the receipts line shocked me. I have been working a lot with federal spending and knew about the WW2 bulge, but you can see how it crashed right after the war. (This gave rise to all the songs we still sing to this […]

Bob Higgs Was an Optimist: No “Ratchet Effect” When It Comes to Federal Tax Receipts

[UPDATE in text.] I am working on a project for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, summarizing the U.S. government’s sorry fiscal situation. I worked up a chart showing the history of federal spending from FY 1930-2011, and it was just what I expected: big surge up through World War II, then a major pullback, and finally a […]

Quick Thoughts on Christians and Marriage

Over the past few weeks I have seen a lot of secular libertarian commentary on the issue of gay marriage. I don’t think there is an adequate understanding of the traditional Christian view on this issue, so in this quick post I just want to try to frame the issue a little more correctly. This […]

Coalition to Reduce Spending–Does It Include Me?

I know a guy involved with this project and he asked me to endorse it. What do y’all think? If you wish, you can distinguish between the very idea of someone with my gravitas giving an endorsement to this kind of dirty political thing, versus this particular dirty political thing.

More Charting Fun With Krugman–Job Creation Edition

What I mean by the title, is that I have a menial task for some plucky Free Advice fan. In this post from May 3, Krugman was arguing that there was no correlation between the size of government pre-crisis and how it did during/after the crisis. He posted this chart: In reference to the above, […]

Laffer vs. Krugman

My former employer Arthur Laffer will be on Bill Maher’s show with my future employee* Paul Krugman on Friday, May 25. I have sent Dr. Laffer material to prepare him for possible Krugman attacks. I have sent no such material to Dr. Krugman. I don’t even have a TV, so if anyone wants to risk […]

Gambling Economists: Behind the Scenes

OK Bryan Caplan and I are running around in circles, so I’m asking for your help. Bryan said I could reproduce our email exchange: ============== BOB WROTE: https://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2012/05/betting-bryan-on-ron-paul-vs.-ross-perot.html BRYAN WROTE: Sorry to aggravate you, Bob. Given that Perot ran 20 years ago, I’d think a decent metric of “lasting influence” would have to take that […]