The recently released 2024 Index of Economic Freedom, published by the Heritage Foundation, reveals that, regrettably, the global average score for economic freedom has fallen from the previous year’s 59.3 and is now the lowest it has been since 2001, at only 58.6. Singapore maintained its status as the world’s freest economy, followed by Switzerland, Ireland and Taiwan. To our credit, the United States has an above-average score of 70.1. The bad news is that’s the lowest score ever for the U.S. in the 30-year history of the index. The U.S. is now the world’s 25th-freest economy. Apparently the Biden administration’s lack of commitment to the rule of law, limited government, regulatory efficiency and market openness is corroding our economic freedom. North Korea has a commanding grip on last place in the index, with a score of 2.9. No other country is even close. Cuba posted the second worst score… Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Economics
Thomas Jefferson on Bidenomics
My fellow Americans – President Biden is currently on a “Bidenomics” tour. Terrible name, “Bidenomics,” because nobody likes Biden so they’re not going to like anything with his name in it. Call it “Satanomics: The Economy is Stronger Than Hell,” which is a lie but so is everything else he says about the economy. His economic team recently posted a “Here Are the Facts” video, the first of which is, “Under the Biden Harris Administration Inflation Has Fallen.” That’s true — if by “Fallen” you mean “Risen.” The annual inflation rate when Biden took office was 1.4 percent. In May 2023, it was 4 percent, about three times higher. Inflation is lower today than the 9.1 percent peak that we hit last June, but you don’t get credit for pushing it to unprecedented levels and then watching it come back down, particularly since it only came down as the Federal… Read more →
A Berkeley Prof Explains Why Grocery Prices Are Skyrocketing
The question is why are they skyrocketing NOW? There's nothing in your tweet that hasn't been true for 10 years. You don't have to be a Berkeley prof to know that so why are you pumping out this BS? https://t.co/rtp6bJM65G — Paul Epps (@paulepps) December 22, 2022 Read more →
Equality vs. Freedom
The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion for equality made vain the hope for freedom. — Lord Acton Formal equality before the law is in conflict, and in fact incompatible, with any activity of the government deliberately aiming at material or substantive equality of different people, and any policy aiming directly at a substantive ideal of distributive justice must lead to the destruction of the Rule of Law. To produce the same result for different people, it is necessary to treat them differently. To give different people the same objective opportunities is not to give them the same subjective chance. It cannot be denied that the Rule of Law produces economic inequality — all that can be claimed for it is that this inequality is not designed to affect particular people in a particular way. It is very significant and characteristic that socialists… Read more →
The Economy is Steady and Stable
The economy is steady and stable. Inflation goes up, GDP goes down, stocks go down — but all in a stable and steady manner. https://t.co/fIGabtAkhs — Paul Epps (@paulepps) September 28, 2022 Read more →
Joe Biden Believes in Hard Work and Ingenuity?
Joe Biden believes that there’s no greater economic engine in the world than the hard work and ingenuity of the American people. But for too long, the economy has worked great for those at the top, while working families continually get squeezed. — President Biden Announces the Build Back Better Framework Joe Biden believes in hard work and ingenuity! Unless that hard work and ingenuity results in the acquisition of wealth, at which point aspiration and investment are to be punished. Read more →
Government Should Be a Referee
Government has three primary functions. It should provide for military defense of the nation. It should enforce contracts between individuals. It should protect citizens from crimes against themselves or their property. When government — in pursuit of good intentions tries to rearrange the economy, legislate morality, or help special interests, the cost comes in inefficiency, lack of motivation, and loss of freedom. Government should be a referee, not an active player. — Milton Friedman Read more →
Psaki: “Unfair and Absurd”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki claimed during Monday’s press briefing that it would be “unfair and absurd” for companies to raise costs on consumers in response to the Biden administration raising the corporate tax rate: Jen Psaki: It’s “unfair and absurd” that companies would increase costs for consumers in response to us taxing them more. ? pic.twitter.com/rHilrYdj4j — Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) September 28, 2021 You can depersonalize the theft by saying “Well, it’s corporate tax rates — greedy corporations, you know.” You don’t need to be an economist to understand that corporate taxes, like any taxes, have to be paid by people: either shareholders, or employees in the form of lower wages, or customers in the form of higher prices. The money has to come from somewhere. Read more →
If All We Want Are Jobs
If all we want are jobs, we can create any number — for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again, or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs — jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume. — Milton Friedman Read more →
Thomas Jefferson: Without Citing Any Evidence
My fellow Americans – I noticed during the Trump presidency that the press developed an affectation where they reported everything he said as “Trump said ‘blah blah blah,’ without citing any evidence.” [Emphasis is my own.] Why Trump was the only human being held to this standard was never clear to me, but I thought of it again this week and perhaps it’s time for a resurrection of “without citing any evidence.” For example, President Biden’s announcement of a victorious withdrawal from Afghanistan might have been better presented as “President Biden, without citing any evidence, called the American withdrawal from Afghanistan a success.” Or when the August jobs report was released, showing that the economy added a disappointing 235,000 jobs vs. an estimate of 720,000, to which the president responded “The Biden plan is working,” more meticulous reportage could have been “‘The Biden plan is working,’ said the president, without… Read more →
The Great Virtue of a Free Market System
The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate one another to deal with one another and help one another. — Milton Friedman Read more →
There Are Four Ways You Can Spend Money
There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you’re doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I’m not so careful about the content of the present, but I’m very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else’s money on myself. And if I spend somebody else’s money on myself, then I’m sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else’s money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else’s money on somebody else, I’m not concerned about how much it is, and I’m not concerned about what I get. And that’s government. And that’s close to 40%… Read more →
Teaching Computer Science: Incentives (or Lack Thereof)
According to this article on TechCrunch, “Every California high school must establish computer science courses as part of its core curriculum.” From the same article: “Most California teachers have little or no training to teach computer science.” Do you see the problem there? I’ve been a programmer for many years . . . I’d be glad to teach computer science to students, teachers or anyone who wants to learn it if there were even a modest incentive to do so. Which there isn’t. One way to measure how much people want something is how much they’re willing to pay for it. There’s no shortage of people talking about teaching programming and computer science, which is free (the talking, that is), but without the incentives ($$$) very little is going to actually happen. Read more →
‘I Am a Marxist’ Says Dalai Lama
The Dalai Lama identified himself as a Marxist on Tuesday while addressing capitalism, discrimination and violence at a lecture on world peace in Kolkata, India. This is not the first time that the 14th Dalai Lama has spoken about his political leaning – in 2011 he said: “I consider myself a Marxist…but not a Leninist” when speaking at a conference in Minneapolis . . . The Tibetan spiritual leader partly blamed capitalism for inequality and said he regarded Marxism as the answer: “In capitalist countries, there is an increasing gap between the rich and the poor. In Marxism, there is emphasis on equal distribution,” he said. — Newsweek Hello, Dalai? An emphasis on equal distribution is not the same thing as equal distribution. In practice, there never seems to be equal distribution, because whoever gets to be in charge of actually distributing the goodies equally acquires a dictatorial level of… Read more →
Most of Economics
Most of economics can be summarized in four words: “People respond to incentives.” The rest is commentary. — Steven Landsburg, The Armchair Economist Read more →
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The notion that we have limited access to the workings of our minds is difficult to accept because, naturally, it is alien to our experience but it is true: You know far less about yourself than you feel you do. A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. It is the consistency of information that matters for a good story, not its completeness. Indeed, you will often find that knowing little makes it easier to fit everything you know into a coherent pattern. The exaggerated faith in small samples is only one example of a more general illusion — we pay more attention to the content of messages than to information about their reliability, and as a result end up with a view of the world around us that is simpler and more coherent than… Read more →
The Hedgehog and the Fox
Hedgehogs “know one big thing” and have a theory about the world: they account for particular events within a coherent framework, bristle with impatience toward those who don’t see things their way, and are confident in their forecasts. They are also especially reluctant to admit error. For hedgehogs, a failed prediction is almost always “off only on timing” or “very nearly right.” They are opinionated and clear, which is exactly what television producers love to see on programs. Two hedgehogs on different sides of an issue, each attacking the idiotic ideas of the adversary, make for a good show. Foxes, by contrast, are complex thinkers. They don’t believe that one big thing drives the march of history . . . Instead the foxes recognize that reality emerges from the interactions of many different agents and forces, including blind luck, often producing large and unpredictable outcomes. . . . They are… Read more →
A Spectacularly Bad Job of Rigging the System
If you nevertheless believe that the capitalists have been busily rigging the system in their own interest, you’ve got to admit they’ve done a spectacularly bad job of it. How else to explain the quintuple taxation of capital income, where you can invest a dollar that was taxed the day you earned it, then pay corporate income taxes, dividend taxes, capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes on the income it throws off? Surely any concern that the rich are calling the policy shots should melt away in the face of actual policy. — Steven Landsburg Read more →
I’ve Solved the Problem of Economic Inequality
Instead of “economic inequality,” let’s call it “economic diversity.” Then it’s a good thing, right? Read more →
The Single Greatest Source of Economic Error
But the underlying fallacy — the failure to notice that things must add up — is, in my experience, the single greatest source of economic error. Politicians routinely promise to make medical care or housing or college educations more widely available by controlling their prices; economists routinely scratch their heads and ask where the extra doctors or houses or classrooms are going to come from. You can no more speed up the line for medical care by lowering prices than you can speed up the deli line by handing out tickets. — Steve Landsburg, The Big Questions Read more →