CEI Podcast: June 28, 2012: The Health Care Decision

Posted on June 28, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI Podcast: June 28, 2012: The Health Care Decision


Have a listen here.

General Counsel Sam Kazman shares his thoughts on the Supreme Court’s health care decision, the Commerce Clause, Congress’ taxation power, and more.

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Posted in CEI Podcast, Economics, Health Care, Law

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Quick Thoughts on the Health Care Ruling

Posted on June 28, 2012 | Comments Off on Quick Thoughts on the Health Care Ruling

The Supreme Court upheld the health care bill, as you’ve no doubt heard by now. Over at the Daily Caller, I add a few quick thoughts about how Randy Barnett’s Commerce Clause argument also applies to Congress’ taxation power, on the Court’s reluctance to check the other branches’ excesses, and how happy rent-seeking insurance companies must be right now.

Read the whole thing here.

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Posted in Economics, Health Care, Publications

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Regulation of the Day 221: Miniature Golf Courses

Posted on June 27, 2012 | 1 comment


Miniature golf is a much more accessible sport than the real thing. Almost anyone can play. You don’t need to drive the ball 200 yards to get a decent score; 200 inches is more than enough. In fact, many players don’t much care what their score is at all. They’re just playing for fun, and trying to dodge the obstacles.

Less fun are the surprisingly detailed federal regulations intended to ensure the game’s accessibility to all. Course owners aren’t too happy about the new Americans with Disabilities Act requirements that came into effect on March 15, though construction firms must be delighted at the windfall Washington just sent them.

The federal government regulates the slopes of miniature golf courses. The new standard “permits a slope of 1:4 maximum for a 4 inch rise where the accessible route is located on the playing surface of a hole.”

If a course uses artificial turf instead of grass, it also regulates length for the fibers. The height of the “grass” shall not exceed half an inch.

The so-called “start of play” areas must be at least 48” x 60”, and shall not have a slope steeper than 1:48.

There’s more, too. You can read the Federal Register entry explaining the federal government’s new miniature golf policies here. In the meantime, one can expect the ADA’s unparalleled track record as lawsuit fodder to continue.

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Posted in Regulation of the Day

The Good-Citizen Economist

Posted on June 27, 2012 | Comments Off on The Good-Citizen Economist

Don Boudreaux’s latest column is about how economists can use their knowledge to make the world a better place. Worth a read.

Most people might think an economist’s greatest non-academic contribution could be advising policymakers, but that isn’t actually true. Any politician worth his salt will listen to the median voter, not to some pointy-headed academic telling him to do something unpopular.

No, an economist’s highest civic contribution is teaching that median voter. I wrote earlier that this person is a boob; he really, truly is. Familiarizing him with the basics of the economic way of thinking is a lifelong project. It is also a necessary one, even though it will almost certainly not pay immediate dividends the way that advising a president might.

But if the median voter were one day to learn how to spot, say, the broken window fallacy, then politicians will learn it, too. The resulting policy changes would make the world a better, richer, and more peaceful place. It’s a long game, but the only way to win it is to play.

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Posted in Economics

“America’s scorn for skills is extraordinary.”

Posted on June 26, 2012 | Comments Off on “America’s scorn for skills is extraordinary.”

The Economist aptly sums up America’s immigration policy.

Don Boudreaux, on page 32 of his wonderful new book, writes that “Free societies build bridges, not walls.”As on so many issues, one is better off siding with Don and The Economist than with nativists.

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Posted in Books, Economics, Immigration

TSA Compassion

Posted on June 26, 2012 | Comments Off on TSA Compassion

The worst part might be that the agent didn’t apologize. She laughed:

John Gross, a resident of Indianapolis’ south side, was leaving Florida with the remains of his grandfather — Mario Mark Marcaletti, a Sicilian immigrant who worked for the Penn Central Railroad in central Indiana — in a tightly sealed jar marked “Human Remains.”

Gross said he didn’t think he’d have a problem, until he ran into a TSA agent at the Orlando airport.

It goes downhill from there.

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Posted in Security Theater

Who Benefits from Paternalism?

Posted on June 26, 2012 | Comments Off on Who Benefits from Paternalism?

One of the most neglected questions in the paternalism debate — largely unasked by both sides — is, who benefits? Harvard’s Ed Glaeser has an answer:

“Advocating soft paternalism is akin to advocating an increased role of the incumbent government as an agent of persuasion.”

-Edward L. Glaeser, “Paternalism and Psychology,” (Regulation vol. 29, no. 2, p. 38, 2006).

Paternalist policies have built-in public choice concerns that all but ensure  results very different from their intentions. Something Mayor Bloomberg and his fellow travelers should keep in mind.

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Posted in Economics, Nanny State, Public Choice, regulation

CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation

Posted on June 25, 2012 | Comments Off on CEI’s Battered Business Bureau: The Week in Regulation


Just another week in the world of regulation:

  • 77 new final rules were published last week, down from 84 the previous week. That’s the equivalent of a new regulation every 2 hours and 11 minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. All in all, 1,790 final rules have been published in the Federal Register this year. If this keeps up, the total tally for 2012 will be 3,765 new rules.
  • 1,633 new pages were added to the 2012 Federal Register last week, for a total of 37,694 pages. At this pace, the 2012 Federal Register will run 77,881 pages.
  • Rules are called “economically significant” if they have costs of $100 million or more in a given year. The 25 such rules published so far in 2012 have compliance costs of at least $14.5 billion. Two of the rules do not have cost estimates, and a third cost estimate does not give a total annual cost. We assume that rules lacking this basic transparency measure cost the bare minimum of $100 million per year. The true cost is almost certainly higher.
  • One economically significant rule was published last week. So far, 203 final rules that meet the broader definition of “significant” have been published in 2012.
  • So far this year, 340 final rules affect small businesses. 55 of them are significant rules.

Highlights from final rules published last week:

  • Last week’s economically significant regulation is intended to prevent prison rape. Some people might snicker at the topic, but rape is emphatically not a laughing matter. The price tag for this rule is $6.9 billion from 2012-2026, or an average of $486.5 million per year. With about 2.3 million people incarcerated nationwide, that’s a little over $200 per prisoner per year.
  • The 70,000-page tax code got a little longer on Monday, and again on Friday.
  • The Transportation Department is revising its program for disadvantaged airport concession workers.
  • The western snowy plover, an endangered bird, is the recipient of 24,257 acres of critical habitat and a new taxonomy, courtesy of the Fish and Wildlife Service. The former Charadrius alexandrinus nivosus is now known as Charadrius nivosus nivosus.

For more data, go to TenThousandCommandments.com.

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Posted in regulation

Globalization Has Been Happening for a Long Time

Posted on June 24, 2012 | Comments Off on Globalization Has Been Happening for a Long Time

Apparently some Roman artifacts were found in a 5th-century A.D. Japanese tomb:

Researchers from Japan’s Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties announced Friday that three glass beads recovered from a Fifth Century burial site near Kyoto bear signs of Roman craftsmanship. This suggests that Roman influence reached as far as East Asia.

“They are one of the oldest multilayered glass products found in Japan, and very rare accessories that were believed to be made in the Roman Empire and sent to Japan,” researcher Tomomi Tamura told AFP.

Six thousand miles was a long way for goods to travel back then. Our innate tendency to truck and barter, as Adam Smith put it, is very strong indeed.

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Posted in Economics, History, Trade

Orszag: Make Voting Mandatory

Posted on June 23, 2012 | 1 comment

Revolving-door veteran Peter Orszag, formerly of OMB and currently of Citigroup, proposes making voting mandatory in a piece over at Bloomberg.

Some poll results show why this is a bad idea:

In short, the median voter in America is a boob.

And the median voter is precisely who decides elections. Politicians, at least successful ones, must pander to people who have roughly the same politico-economic acumen as my cats. Hence the slew of unwise policies in both the Republican and Democratic party platforms.

Keep in mind that the least educated people are also the least likely to vote. Mandatory voting, by bringing the uneducated to the polls, would make the median voter an even bigger boob than he already is. This could well lead to even worse policy outcomes than we have now.

But consequentialism isn’t all there is to it. There is also the principle of the thing. This is a free country. Voting is a choice, not a duty or an obligation. People should be able to choose for themselves whether or not to vote. Peter Orszag shouldn’t make that decision for you.

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Posted in Elections, Political Animals