Category: Economics

John McCain has famously said he doesn’t know much about economics. A recent AP wire story by Glen Johnson illustrates as much: The presumed Republican nominee on Monday proposed a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. The bounty would equate to $1 for every man, woman… Read more

Kip is making fun of an op-ed by Robert Crandall in the New York Times, and rightly so. Consider the first paragraphs of Crandall’s missive: Thirty years ago this fall, Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Since then, America’s airline system has greatly deteriorated. I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Another… Read more

Frederick W. Kagan has an article in National Review Online that attempts to refute some of the antiwar arguments about Iraq. I haven’t read the whole thing—It’s a huge piece that covers a lot of ground, and some of it may even be correct—but there’s a pretty glaring example of the broken-windows fallacy in the… Read more

I’ve been trying to make sense of what the Federal Reserve has been doing with Bear Stearns. My usual source for smart thinking about financial issues, Kip Esquire, is so far silent, so I’m trying to figure this out myself. It’s not going well. The argument against government bailouts of private businesses is that it’s… Read more

Over at Simple Justice, Gritsforbreakfast left this comment: My college major was economics, and I was downright angry when, after learning all the theory, it became clear that nearly every “assumption” economists said make free markets “work” was actually, demonstrably false. E.g., people have perfect information, make rational choices that maximize their self-interest, etc.. For… Read more