The problems of trying to actually identify Keynesian spending multipliers is nothing new, but it was brought home to me this last week. You see, my mother-in-law passed away just after her stimulus check arrived. Her children chose to use it to pay for her headstone. Being more familiar with the discussion than most spending, … Continue reading WatsOn My Mind: Stimulus Multipliers
I’m running a teacher training program this week in Moscow. While I will have wordier thoughts later, this piece of street art needs no commentary:
That, and spring time: that mystical time of year when a young student’s fancy turns to their neglected grades and wonders if there is anything they can do once the semester is over to raise them. — Culture is an emergent order. It cannot be owned, so you can’t have a “right” to a culture. … Continue reading Watson my mind today: culture change
And how ‘bout them Dodgers, hunh? Actually, how about each division’s top team? That’s a lot of winning! — A partial response to Marx’ claim that managers are expropriating the value produced by the workers while providing nothing themselves: “The study showed that managers didn’t just influence the results their teams achieved, they explained a … Continue reading Watson my mind today: labor markets
Apart from grading, reviewing, and my soon-to-be 5-yr-old’s birthday, that is… – A good question from Don Boudreaux. “Assuming (contrary to fact) that American trade deficits do necessarily cause Americans’ indebtedness to foreigners to rise, why do you bemoan these deficits? Why not instead cheer them? … Being indebted to foreigners means that we Americans must … Continue reading Watson my mind today
I wrote the following update for my Principles of Macroeconomics students and thought it might just count as an update for Wats On My Mind. In the first two minutes of class, I asked you how you would know how the economy is doing. Let’s focus on our three big areas: GDP, unemployment, and inflation. … Continue reading Wats On My Mind: the state of the economy
Derril Watson offer some critical remarks on my short post about populism in Latin America. In short, Watson is arguing that (1) I’m stating something obvious (populism diminishes economic freedom) and (2) that I’m wrong when I say that populism fails to produce economic growth. Seems I haven’t been quite clear, because I state none … Continue reading Digging Deeper into Populism: A Short Reply to Derril Watson
It’s been a heck of a year. Thanks for plugging along with Notes On Liberty. Like the world around me, NOL keeps getting better and better. Traffic in 2019 came from all over the place, but the usual suspects didn’t disappoint: the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, India, and Australia (in that order) supplied the … Continue reading 2019: Year in Review
Immigration and voting for redistribution Derrill Watson, NOL What shouldn’t be surprising about democracy John Hasnas, RCL Wobbly: China’s post-Covid future Andrew Scobell, War on the Rocks Experts versus elites Robin Hanson, Overcoming Bias
TL;DR summary: The one thing most populist governments studied had in common was a declining protection for property rights. Focus there next time. Nicolás Cachanosky explained that populism in five Latin American countries had led to a rapid deterioration in their economic freedom, intimating that this also led to a relative drop in living standards compared … Continue reading Digging Deeper into Populism
I’ve gone over the knowledge problem associated with foreign policy before, and I believe it is sufficient to say that libertarians were right in deflating predictions by hawks that the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq would go over smoothly. Hawks on both the Left and the Right oversimplified the situation in the Middle East. … Continue reading The Predictable Failure of the Iraq War
This is Part Two of a report on my American Independence Day (Part one is “An Eventful American Independence Night.” It was posted on July 5th 2012.) The best beach in Santa Cruz was cordoned off for the evening with plastic netting, and illuminated by powerful projectors. There were only a small number of narrow entry … Continue reading Liberal Authoritarianism: Independence Day, the Sequel
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