Economics

Archive for Economics

On the California Water Restrictions

Here I went off on a “US Uncut” poster about it, and below is my video.

Financiers vs. Academic Economists

My friend tipped me off to this speech by Charlie Munger that is quite provocative and funny, mostly because he says stuff that only rich old guys can get away with saying. For context, Munger is Vice-Chairman at Berkshire Hathaway, and apparently Warren Buffett refers to Munger as “my partner.” Munger is a self-made man worth […]

I Guess Robert Reich Doesn’t Read Cowen and Tabarrok

…because he’s apparently unaware of the Marginal Revolution. Zing! My latest at Mises CA: If I still haven’t convinced you, consider it this way: Why stop at education? Surely food and clothing are even more important than formal schooling. So how does the pay of migrant farm and textile workers compare to schoolteachers in the […]

Potpourri

==> I thought this Lew Rockwell podcast about “guilt, shame, and anxiety” was interesting. Now I understand my life… ==> My recent Mises CA post on bank moral hazard and liability for shareholders. ==> Here’s the agenda for the Texas Bitcoin conference, on March 28-29 in Austin. If you use discount code “robertmurphy” you get […]

Believing Is Seeing: Noah Smith Reagan Record Edition

Besides my contributions to the rehabilitation of the fine art of karaoke, one of my favorite contributions to humanity is the phrase, “Believing Is Seeing.” (It is self-affirming since many of you probably initially read the post title as, “Seeing Is Believing.”) Today’s example comes from a recent Noah Smith blog post, where Noah wrote: […]

Are Markets Myopic?

My sources say no. From my latest at FEE: Notice that even if a particular owner of a tin deposit is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he still has an incentive to behave in this “efficient” manner. The reason is that he can sell the tin deposit outright. The market value of the entire deposit will […]

The Robot Lobby Loves a Minimum Wage Hike

There is a clever page on Facebook purporting to represent Robots who are for a $15 minimum wage. Here’s one of their “posters”: This is fantastic. It alludes to the fact that labor unions and other groups support the minimum wage for personal gain, while cloaking that support with noble-sounding rhetoric. (Here’s a recent article […]

Think About This For a Second

We were talking about experiments concerning special relativity, and I said that an atomic clock was super accurate. My son asked what exactly that meant. This question befuddled me, because I realized I couldn’t come up with a non-arbitrary way of defining a “true” second. Wikipedia informs us: The second (symbol: s) is the base […]