Don Boudreaux, Susan Dudley, and Bradley Schiller make some good points:
-Companies spending lots of time and money in Washington begging for handouts is not capitalism.
-Stricter regulation isn’t the solution. Companies routinely rig regulations in their favor to hobble competitors. That isn’t capitalism, either.
If the embedded video below doesn’t work, click here.
Comments Off on Cronyism in America
Posted in Competition, Economics, regulation
Tagged boudreaux, capitalism, dudley
In an effort to shorten its lengthy and complicated tax code, the Commonwealth of Virginia is considering adding an $8,000 tax deduction for people who have their cremated remains shot into space.
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I am quoted in an editorial in today’s New York Sun:
Ryan Young of the Competitive Enterprise Institute wrote to say that America itself is not entirely a “free-market fundamentalist nation. “Federal, state and local governments combine to spend roughly 40% of GDP,” Mr. Young pointed out, “and that doesn’t count the cost of compliance with federal regulations.”
Comments Off on New York Sun Editorial on Andy Stern and China’s Economic Model
Posted in Economics, Media Appearances
This letter of mine in response to Andy Stern’s recent op-ed ran in today’s Wall Street Journal:
If America is indeed a free-market fundamentalist nation, it sure has a funny way of showing it. Federal, state and local governments combine to spend roughly 40% of GDP, and that doesn’t count the cost of compliance with federal regulations.
In his eagerness to attack free markets, Mr. Stern has confused the mixed economy’s crony capitalism with the real thing.
Ryan Young
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington
Comments Off on Free-Market Fundamentalism
Posted in Correspondence, Economics, regulation, Spending
There’s a brewing debate in the economics blogosphere about whether Hayek was a macroeconomist. Was he or wasn’t he? Did his contributions matter?
For the uninitiated, macroeconomics is large-scale in focus. It looks at the big-picture economy. GDP, recessions, depressions, that kind of thing. Contrast that with microeconomics, which studies how individuals and individual firms behave. I like how Russ Roberts closes his contribution to the debate:
Was Hayek an important macroeconomist? I would argue that the macroeconomic skepticism of the later Hayek is more valuable than the macroeconomic theorizing of the early Hayek. But he wasn’t an important macroeconomist in the mainstream sense of the title. So what? That’s a badge of honor. He was merely a great economist, without any prefix. He helps me see things I wouldn’t otherwise see. That’s all that really counts.
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Posted in Economics
Here’s a letter to The Wall Street Journal:
Editor, The Wall Street Journal:
Andy Stern’s December 1 op-ed, “China’s Superior Economic Model,” blames America’s free-market fundamentalism for its economic troubles.
If America is indeed a free-market fundamentalist nation, it sure has a funny way of showing it. Federal, state, and local governments combine to spend roughly 40 percent of GDP. Washington indirectly spends another 12 percent of GDP by forcing businesses and consumers to comply with $1.75 trillion worth of federal regulations.
In his eagerness to attack free markets, Mr. Stern has confused the mixed economy’s crony capitalism for the real thing.
Ryan Young
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C.
Comments Off on What Free Market?
Posted in Correspondence, Economics
Tagged andy stern, capitalism, free-market fundamentalism, seiu
Here’s a letter I recently sent to the Washington Post:
Editor, Washington Post:
Anita Kumar’s November 29 Virginia Politics blog post “McDonnell recommends eliminating agencies, boards, commissions” incompletely details Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s “ongoing effort to reshape and shrink state government.” By deregulating three professions, eliminating two state agencies, and merging 19 others, $2 million could be trimmed from the commonwealth’s budget if the legislature approves the proposal.
She does not mention that Virginia’s budget is set to increase by $1.1 billion in 2012. This new spending outweighs the proposed cuts by a factor of 550. Gov. McDonnell may be modestly reshaping government, but he certainly isn’t shrinking it.
Ryan Young, Washington
The writer is a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Comments Off on Missing the Bigger Story
Posted in Correspondence, Economics, Spending
Tagged bob mcdonnell, size of government, virginia spending, washington post
An (inentionally?) humorous lede in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
The Internal Revenue Service office in Seattle is investigating an infestation of possible blood-sucking parasites — bedbugs — in its downtown office, after an employee complained of insect bites at work, federal officials said Monday.
“It is alleged (that) management has known of the presence of these parasites for several weeks and has taken no action to remedy the situation,” OSHA said in a letter to the IRS dated Nov. 18.
Here’s a letter I sent to Politico:
Editor, Politico:
Jonathan Allen’s November 28 article, “Mandatory budget cuts after supercommittee failure will trigger pain for some,” is misleading. A cut is when spending goes down. Federal spending will go up every year for at least the next ten years, even with the supercommittee’s failure to reach a bipartisan agreement.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, defense spending is projected to increase by 18 percent between 2013 and 2021. Discretionary spending is set to increase by 12 percent over the same period. These increases are lower than previous projections. But they are still increases. And an increase is not a cut. Not even in Washington.
Ryan Young
See also the chart below that the Mercatus Center’s Veronique De Rugy put together using CBO data. I can’t put it more plainly: there are no supercommittee-related budget cuts. Stop saying that there are.
Comments Off on Let Me Be Clear
Posted in Correspondence, Economics, Spending
Tagged budget cuts, spending cuts, supercommittee
No man is an island. Economics is based on that fact. You can’t make an exchange, and markets cannot emerge, with solitary people leading solitary lives. Evolution bears this out. Our predecessors, from at least Australopithecus on down, lived in bands and tribes. Not alone. They lived, loved, ate, fought, and died together. We are evolved to need each other.
Rousseau, who died over 70 years before Darwin’s Origin of Species, thought differently. His Original Man in the state of nature assumes away our innate social tendencies. From his false premises come many of his false conclusions:
He [Rousseau] begins with a portrait of natural man as a solitary animal devoid of reason and speech, a being whose limited needs can be easily satisfied without depending on anyone, whose soul is restricted to the sole sentiment of his existence without any idea of the future, as near as it may be.
Robert Zaresky and John T. Scott, The Philosophers’ Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding, location 381 in the Kindle edition.
From that miserable Rousseauian Eden, we are fallen. Thank goodness.
Posted in Books, Economics, Philosophy
Tagged autralopithecus, darwin, Economics, human nature, rousseau
Inertia Wins! 