Friday, November 2, 2012

Friday Links

No matter who is elected our fiscal affairs must be fixed. This is a nice lesson on the basic problems from the Wall Street Journal.

There is a large literature in economics on rent-seeking (think privilege seeking). This blog post points out the shameless lengths special interests go to keep the privileges coming. On a related note, when we increase the size of the government we see more of this kind of behavior because the prizes to special interests are larger than before. I have never understood how this lesson is not understood by more people.

While we are talking about rent-seeking I read a nice quote from the intellectual father of that term Gordon Tullock. He argues that economists should be actively engaged in public discussion on economic topics.

Also, just listened last night to this excellent podcast by Bryan Caplan on his book the Myth of the Rational Voter. It is 80 minutes but worth every minute of it! You are in for a treat that will give you some serious things to think about.

No comments: