Economics

Archive for Economics

Full-Time vs. Part-Time Workers

Does anyone else find this chart shocking? Here’s the source. I was looking up the proportion of part-time versus full-time workers to see if the passage of ObamaCare had any noticeable impact. (Note: Be sure to look carefully at the left and right axes. It’s not that the whole composition of the workforce has flipped.) […]

Scott Sumner Wants to Take Income Away From All of Us

In a post titled, “Income is meaningless, example #388” Scott quotes from Matt Yglesias who wrote: One issue this poses is that analysis of political issues in terms of “income” quartiles can get pretty misleading. A married couple where dad earns $65,000 a year and mom works part time bringing home $15,000 a year is […]

More on Drug Cartels and Private Law

I realized from the reaction of some people here that I did not assure readers I had fully understood Gene Callahan’s point, when he claimed that drug cartels today offer a real-world glimpse into what Rothbardian defense agencies would look like. So I wrote a follow-up post to be sure I acknowledged Gene’s exact point, […]

Potpourri

==> David R. Henderson reports on media bias in the Denver school shooting (one and two). ==> Some of these kids’ test answers are literally “laugh out loud” funny. Be sure you get what’s going on with the Chinese immigrant one. ==> A classic Rothbard essay on dealing with water shortages. Yes, he lays out […]

Illustrating “the Collapse” in Government Spending

[UPDATE below.] Frequent commentator MajorFreedom linked to this, and I thought it worth highlighting. Remember, I had linked to David R. Henderson’s critique of Paul Krugman, who put up a graph–in a post titled “Unprecedented Austerity”–showing percentage changes in (a three-year average of) total government spending at all levels in the U.S. Krugman then said […]

Potpourri

==> I’m being serious: Mark Spitznagel sent me this, and neither of us can tell if this is a complete fabrication about “Krugman’s response.” Thoughts? I’d call in the world’s leading forensic expert on the writing of Paul Krugman, but that would present a conflict of interest. ==> What kind of crazy upside down world […]

Greatest Hits from The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism

I had to send this to someone else, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to showcase this blast from the past. There was a gathering in DC in the summer of 2007 for a bunch of “PIG” authors to talk about their respective books. I think in this talk I focus on the economics […]

The Real Flaw in Williamson’s Inflation Argument?

Wow, I don’t know if you kids have been following the blow-up over Stephen Williamson’s arguments about QE–I gave you a hint in this Potpourri when talking about Nick Rowe’s blog rage–but it has the potential to rival the Great Debt Debate of 2012. At this point we’ve got a full-blown shooting war, with Williamson, […]