Category Archives: Correspondence

The Myth of Bush the Deregulator

Posted on May 17, 2010 | Comments Off on The Myth of Bush the Deregulator

Here’s a letter I sent recently to The New York Times:

May 14, 2010

Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

To the Editor:

Your May 12 article “With Obama, Regulations Are Back in Fashion” (page A15) asserts that the Bush administration had a “deregulatory agenda.” If that is true, then President Bush failed miserably in executing it.

His administration added 31,634 new regulations to the books, and repealed hardly any. The cost of complying with federal regulations exceeded $1 trillion for the first time on Bush’s watch. 587,321 new pages were added to Federal Register during the Bush years.*

Even the regulation-intensive Obama administration is passing new regulations at a pace nearly ten percent slower than President Bush.

Contrary to the article, the Bush administration was the best friend regulators have had in a generation or more.

Ryan Young
Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, DC

*All data from Wayne Crews, Ten Thousand Commandments.

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Posted in Correspondence, Media, regulation

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I Get Hate Mail

Posted on April 15, 2010 | 1 comment

A reader sent the following email to Wayne Crews and I in response to our article that ran in today’s AOL News. My reply follows.

Your vague double-talk would likely indicate that you are republican. The final statement in your opening paragraph seems to insinuate that the current administration (democrats) will escalate the already enormous number of federal regulations. If my recollection is correct, Clinton was the last president to really chisel away at some of this, and not only balanced the budget, but facilitated a surplus. Republicans, led by the renegade Bush, put us into a war, based on COMPLETE LIES which is the true base of the current enormous deficit. (Oh, and by the way, lots of Bush affiliates made a fortune over in Iraq. Hhmm?) This along with the deregulation pushed thru by the republican-controlled congress during the Clinton administration (giving banks ridiculously dangerous new powers) led to the economic CRASH of our current RECESSION (to put it lightly) – not to mention the crazy policies of the Federal Reserve and lack of oversight by the SEC during Bush’s DESPOTIC REIGN. The bail-outs pushed by Bush as he was leaving office and the subsequent pressured NECESSITY for Obama to continue in the same vein was certainly NOT the fault of the democrats. They were forced to deal with the CRAP left behind by the republicans, or face complete collapse of our entire economy. Bush and the republicans are the crazy lying right wing bigots that have the Christian right SNOWED. They could not care less about righteousness. They simply coddle the Christian right to get their votes with issues like Anti-Abortion and Anti-Gay-Marriage. The members of the early Church (followers of Christ after His death) sold everything and everyone put all their wealth together, and each was given as was needed (sort of like SOCIALISM or even COMMUNISM). The dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest stance of the republican party, supported by the Christian right, could not be any further from the system of the original followers of Christ, His Church.

I sent him this reply:

[Name redacted] – Thanks for writing. I am actually an independent. So is Wayne. I opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, am pro-gay marriage and pro-choice, I oppose the drug war and the PATRIOT Act, and I favor separation of church and state. It would be quite a stretch to call me a Republican. I share your negative opinion of Bush, and am proud that I never voted for him.

One point of correction, though: Bush and his fellow Republicans didn’t deregulate a thing. In fact, more than 30,000 new regulations hit the books on his watch! You can check the data for yourself in Wayne’s new study at http://www.cei.org/10kc/.

With 157,000 pages of regulations on the books from 59 different federal departments, it is quite difficult to even find a free market to blame for our troubles. That’s why there’s a growing consensus in the economic literature that decades of federal interventions into the housing market was a major cause of the recession.

All the best,

Ryan

UPDATE: My correspondent replied with a very kind mea culpa this morning (4/16). He originally wrote in a fit of anger, and now retracts calling Wayne and I Republicans. Seems like a nice guy, actually.

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Posted in Correspondence, Economics, regulation

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Stimulus Spending Helps the Few, Hurts the Many

Posted on February 22, 2010 | 1 comment

Here is a letter I sent recently to The New York Times:

February 17, 2010

Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

To the Editor:

Michael Cooper’s article, “Stimulus Jobs on State’s Bill in Mississippi” (February 16, page A1), lists several people who have directly benefited from the stimulus package.

The article names none of the roughly 300 million people directly hurt by that same stimulus package. The money that pays for Roshonda Bolton’s factory job was taken away from other people. They would have spent that money in other job-creating ways.

The stimulus doesn’t actually create jobs. It rearranges them. The best possible result is no net effect. Stories touting jobs saved or created by government are at best incomplete.

Ryan Young
Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C.

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Posted in Correspondence, Economics, Stimulus

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Don’t Worry about Trade Deficits

Posted on December 5, 2009 | Comments Off on Don’t Worry about Trade Deficits

Here’s a letter I sent recently to the New York Daily News:

December 3, 2009

Editor, New York Daily News
450 W. 33rd Street
New York, NY 10001

Washington, D.C.: In his December 3 column, “On jobs front, President Obama needs to show a little audacity,” Errol Louis worries about America’s trade deficit. He shouldn’t.

I run an ongoing trade deficit with my local grocery store. I import food from them every week. They have never purchased a thing from me in return. Even so, we both benefit. I’d rather have their food than my money, and they’d rather have my money than the food on their shelves. This is true even if an international border separates us.

If Mr. Louis is as worried about trade deficits as he says he is, he would never again set foot in a grocery store, start growing his own food, and engage only in barter transactions. If he doesn’t, he is either misinformed, or else he doesn’t really believe what he writes.

Ryan Young
Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C.

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Posted in Correspondence, Economics, Trade

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Net Neutrality and Rent-Seeking

Posted on October 5, 2009 | Comments Off on Net Neutrality and Rent-Seeking

Here is a letter I sent recently to The Wall Street Journal:

September 22, 2009

Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281

To the Editor:

Your article “Bad News for Broadband” (editorial, Sept. 22) hints at, but does not make, a key point: net neutrality proposals are driving a wedge between service providers like AT&T and content providers like Google.

Strange, is it not? Their interests are actually closely aligned. If AT&T upgrades its network, Google benefits from the increased bandwidth. If Google improves its products, AT&T benefits from increased demand for broadband.

Net neutrality proposals give companies the incentive to seek rents at each other’s expense when they could be benefiting from each other’s innovations instead. This must be music to the ears of lobbyists, but how sad for consumers.

Ryan Young
Fellow in Regulatory Studies
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C.

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Posted in Correspondence, Economics, Public Choice, Technology

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Money Is Not Wealth

Posted on August 13, 2009 | Comments Off on Money Is Not Wealth

Here’s a letter I sent recently to The New York Times:

Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

To the Editor:

Eric Zencey’s article “G.D.P. R.I.P” (August 10) correctly points out that GDP has limited usefulness in measuring well-being. But his case is muddled by confusing money with wealth. Money is a unit of measure, like a mile or a ton. But it is not itself wealth.

He writes, “If you get into a fender-bender and have your car fixed, G.D.P. goes up.” It actually stays the same. If I don’t get into the accident, I’ll just spend the repair money on something else. While the accident may have no effect on GDP, it does have an effect on wealth; I am inarguably poorer. Instead of a working car plus a new tv, I can enjoy only the car.

Zencey’s confusion is itself an example of why GDP does a poor job of measuring well-being.

RYAN YOUNG
Fellow in Regulatory Studies
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, Aug. 10, 2009

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Posted in Correspondence, Economics, Monetary Theory

The Antitrust Religion still Has Many Adherents

Posted on July 31, 2009 | Comments Off on The Antitrust Religion still Has Many Adherents

Here’s a letter I sent recently to the Financial Times:

July 29, 2009
Editor, Financial Times
1330 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10019

From Mr Ryan Young.
Sir, Mario Monti’s call for harmonized and reinvigorated EU and U.S. antitrust policies (“Watchdogs of the world, unite!”, July 29) is misguided. Consumers are best served when competing firms concentrate on bettering themselves, rather than hobbling their rivals. Antitrust policy discourages the former, and encourages the latter. Why bother with the ongoing challenge of competing in the marketplace if one can merely go to Brussels or Washington?

The great irony of antitrust policy is that it reduces market competition whenever and wherever it is applied. Such is its very nature.

Ryan Young
Fellow in Regulatory Studies,
Competitive Enterprise Institute,
Washington, DC, US

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Posted in Antitrust, Correspondence, Economics

Policies to Promote Competition often Stifle it Instead

Posted on July 22, 2009 | Comments Off on Policies to Promote Competition often Stifle it Instead

Here’s a letter I recently sent to The Wall Street Journal:

July 20, 2009

Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281

To the Editor:

Amy Schatz’s article “New FCC Chairman’s Agenda Includes Broader Internet Access, More Transparency” (Corporate News, July 20) is most revealing. Chairman Genachowski seems to believe that forcing companies to share proprietary networks with their competitors would not reduce the incentive to build and improve such networks.

Just as puzzling, AT&T’s exclusive deal to provide service for Apple’s iPhone has come under scrutiny on anti-competitive grounds. This exclusive arrangement has encouraged competitors to come up with new and better devices of their own; thirty attempts have already hit the market. Competition is alive and well.

Chairman Genachowski is right that the Internet has been “the most successful driver of economic growth” in recent years. Why, then, pursue an agenda that would discourage investment in wired and wireless networks?

Ryan Young
Fellow in Regulatory Studies
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington

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Posted in Antitrust, Correspondence, Economics

Letter in Time Magazine

Posted on January 8, 2009 | Comments Off on Letter in Time Magazine

One of my favorite games as a child was the whack-a-mole game at Chuck E. Cheese. As an adult, I play a similar game with economic fallacies. Whenever one pops up, knock it down.

In that spirit, my colleague Drew Tidwell and I fired off a letter to Time Magazine recently; one of their columnists fell for the old broken window fallacy. Drew and I must have done a good job knocking down that economic mole, because Time ran our letter in their latest issue. You can read our lightly edited missive here (second letter down).

Or if the link doesn’t work, here’s the text:

Kinsley’s latest missive in time falls prey to one of the oldest traps in economics–Frédéric Bastiat’s broken-window fallacy. Just as a broken window creates work for the glazier at the expense of the window owner, money that Kinsley hopes to inject into the economy must first be taken out of it. Add in collection costs and the usual political malfeasance, and we have a net loss to the economy. There’s more: Kinsley argues that last summer’s high oil prices were essentially a tax on consumers; the money just went to oil companies instead of the government. But he forgets that oil companies do not have control over their prices. If they did, then why would oil prices ever drop? Kinsley’s logic does not follow. Ryan Young and Drew Tidwell, Competitive Enterprise Institute, WASHINGTON

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Posted in Correspondence, Economics, Publications

More on Mortgages

Posted on December 17, 2008 | Comments Off on More on Mortgages

Just sent this to the Wall Street Journal:

December 17, 2008

Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281

To the Editor:

R. Glenn Hubbard and Christopher J. Mayer look with alarm at the decline in housing prices (“Low-Interest Mortgages Are the Answer,” December 17).

Two thoughts: First, why is it acceptable for housing prices to go up, but not down? If Hubbard and Mayer want increased homeownership, they should cheer for lower prices. The law of demand states that when something is cheap, people buy more of it.

Second, artificially tinkering with mortgage interest rates will not change the underlying realities of supply and demand. Existing Hubbard-Mayer-style interventions such as Fannie Mae already induce consumers to take on loans they can’t afford. Too much borrowing is one cause of the current economic slowdown. The solution is not to borrow even more.

If this is the state of expert opinion, then experts should be kept as far away from policy makers as possible.

Ryan Young

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Posted in Correspondence, Economics