Economics Roundtable

Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal:

You report that the Obama administration seeks “legislation that would give the federal government the power to reject unreasonable rate increases” by health insurers (“White House Warns Insurers Against Rate Hikes,” Sept. 9).

Sounds reasonable.  But it isn’t.  “Unreasonable” is too vague and ...

Here’s a letter to the Baltimore Sun:

I object to the sentiment conveyed by the title of Andrew Yarrow’s op-ed “Vote now or forever hold your peace” (Sept. 8).  There might be good reasons for voting; either prudence or ethics, or both, might suggest it to a citizen as a ...

My GMU Econ colleague, the great monetary theorist and historian Larry White, has this splendid op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal.  In it, Larry explains that the post-WWII “German economic miracle” resulted from economic liberalization – and that Germany’s economy slowed down ...

Robert Samuelson points out that since 1971, there has been virtually no change in educational scores in reading and math at the national level. Then he gives some very useful facts to remember:

Standard theories don’t explain this meager progress. Too few teachers? Not really. From 1970 to 2008, the ...

Paul Krugman and Robin Wells writing in the New York Review of Books (HT: Brad DeLong) criticize Raghuram Rajan for believing that government policy bears a lot of responsibility for the housing crisis:

In the world according to Rajan, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago business ...

Here’s some evidence that America’s transportation infrastructure isn’t “crumbling.”  (HT Aaron Merrill)

Note to the commentors who accuse me of being a mindless ideologue: because nearly all of what most people think of as “infrastructure” (things such as roads, bridges, harbors) are built and maintained by government, a true mindless ...

George Will’s wisdom on self-styled ‘environmentalists‘ and the recent evaluation thereof by Walter Russell Mead.

Check out the highlighted passage in this recent Economist article on Canada’s health-care system. (HT my friend from Toronto Ed Barr)

EconLog’s David Henderson on government intervention into health-care markets.

Here’s a letter to the New York Times:

EPA Assistant Administrator Gina McCarthy explains that her agency is designing a new and improved fuel-economy label for (mandated) placement on all new cars sold in the U.S. (Letters, Sept. 7).

Taking Ms. McCarthy’s advice, I visited the EPA’s website and examined ...

Paul Krugman (HT: John Papola) calls on history to justify more government spending:

From an economic point of view World War II was, above all, a burst of deficit-financed government spending, on a scale that would never have been approved otherwise. Over the course of the war the federal government ...

In the latest EconTalk, Arnold Kling makes the case that political power is growing more concentrated even as knowledge is getting more dispersed. He argues that this is an unhealthy trend and suggests some ways to make things better. Arnold, as always, has many interest insights.