Category: Economics
We Don’t Need a Stimulus
I admit I haven’t been closely following the progress of Biden’s pandemic stimulus bill in Congress, because the back-and-forth arguments exceeded my tolerance for tedium. Nevertheless, I don’t think a stimulus is what we need. Let me start by saying that what we need most from a pandemic relief bill is things that make the… Read more
Doing Something About Tuition Debt
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has a plan to deal with tuition loan debt: My plan for broad student debt cancellation will: Cancel debt for more than 95% of the nearly 45 million Americans with student loan debt; Wipe out student loan debt entirely for more than 75% of the Americans with that debt; Substantially… Read more
Carbon Dividend/Carbon Tax
I’ve fallen behind on my blog reading, so I missed Greg Laden’s post a few days ago in which he tries to argue that carbon taxes aren’t really taxes. Actually, he seems to prefer to call them a “carbon dividend,” which is apparently the trendy new name for this idea. I googled and found this… Read more
Trump and the Art of the Vandal
On Monday of last week, Harley-Davidson announced that it will be moving production of motorcycles destined for the European Union to somewhere outside the United States. The reason isn’t hard to understand: In response to U.S. duties on European steel and aluminum, the EU enacted tariffs Friday on more than $3 billion worth of U.S.… Read more
Does Safer Heroin Use Mean More Heroin Use?
Megan McArdle is one of my favorite columnists, and she has a new gig over at the Washington Post, where she recently wrote an article about a fascinating just-released economics working paper that caught my eye. The authors, Jennifer Doleac and Anita Mukherjee, studied how the opioid addict population has responded to the drug naloxone becoming more readily available.… Read more