Mutually voluntary arrangements are those each participant believes best advances their ends, without violating others’ similar pursuit of their ends. And what can better advance others’ ends than letting them choose how to use their current means most productively as they see it?
Category: Economics
The Coolidge Curve
Harding blasted a federal “financial orgy” but struggled to restrain it. Coolidge set about the task with relish. With his budget director, Herbert Lord, he set targets for spending cuts, and he developed tax cuts with Treasury secretary Andrew Mellon. He announced his tax reforms in December; tax exempt securities would lose their special status and tax rates would be cut. Coolidge, who had a moral aversion to high taxes, echoed Mellon’s argument that lower rates “will not greatly reduce the revenue from that source, and may in the future actually increase it” by stimulating economic growth.
Valuable Mercatus Center Study Surveys Progress and Setbacks in the Struggle Against Exclusionary Zoning
Exclusionary zoning is the most important property rights issue of our time, a stifler of economic growth, and a major obstacle to opportunity for the poor and disadvantaged. While liberals, conservatives and libertarians all have compelling reasons to oppose it, there are also powerful NIMBY factions on both right and left defending it.
Did Drug Decriminalization Cause a ‘Catastrophe’ in Oregon?
Many of the problems the state is experiencing are caused by the continuing impact of prohibition.
It is important to keep in mind that Oregon’s Measure 110 did nothing to address the supply of illegal drugs, which remain just as iffy and potentially deadly as they were before the initiative was approved. Decriminalization was limited to drug users, and it was based on the premise that people should not be arrested merely for consuming forbidden intoxicants. This distinction between drug users and drug suppliers is similar to the policy enacted during Prohibition, when bootleggers were treated as criminals but drinkers were not.
https://reason.com/2023/08/03/did-drug-decriminalization-cause-a-catastrophe-in-oregon/
Where Have All the Workers Gone? Zoning and Its Unintended Consequences.
Zoning laws squeeze out opportunities for lower-income workers to enjoy the same beauty and experiences of living in small-towns like Great Barrington. Instead, they must spend up to 2 hours a day commuting from far-away towns, taking away from their quality of life.
Castle Rock, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins and Boulder saw rent increases between 27-53 percent between 2017-2023 and have allowed very little housing to be built. In contrast, cities like New Rochelle with more relaxed zoning laws have enjoyed far smaller rent increases in the single digits.
Cash, Crime, Minimum Wage, and Unintended Consequences
Government regulation is often seen as the savior to problems that arise in the market economy, such as giving the poor fewer payment options for consumer goods. However, laws frequently focus on a single issue arising in markets without considering that the underlying cause may be the unintended consequences of other public policies.
https://www.aier.org/article/cash-crime-minimum-wage-and-unintended-consequences/
Another Athlete Chooses a Low‐Tax State
Grant Williams left the Boston Celtics for the Dallas Mavericks, at least partly because of Massachusetts’ Millionaire’s Tax.
https://www.cato.org/blog/another-athlete-chooses-low-tax-state
Adam Smith Wasn’t a Progressive
Stop quoting him out of context on taxation, education, and monopoly.
Not only did Smith not endorse a progressive income tax, he did not endorse any sort of income tax. “Capitation taxes,” he warned, “if it is attempted to proportion them to the fortune or revenue of each contributor, become altogether arbitrary. The state of a man’s fortune varies from day to day, and without an inquisition more intolerable than any tax, and renewed at least once every year, can only be guessed at. His assessment, therefore, must in most cases depend upon the good or bad humour of his assessors, and must, therefore, be altogether arbitrary and uncertain.”
https://reason.com/2023/06/04/adam-smith-wasnt-a-progressive/
Adam Smith Has Something for Everyone
From the American Founders to communist meme creators, people have long claimed Smith’s endorsement for their ideas.
There’s a reason that everyone still wants a piece of the odd Scottish bachelor after all these centuries. In an age when one can make the case to melt down nearly every statue of a once-revered figure, Adam Smith remains startlingly unproblematic. He was scathing about the slave trade as well as the mistreatment of Native Americans. His compassion for underdogs and his delight in the improvement of the circumstances of the poor shine though the archaic prose, as does the sincerity of his self-scrutiny.
https://reason.com/2023/06/01/adam-smith-has-something-for-everyone/
The Socialist Generation Debate
Lange and the other socialists went out, saw the enormous, terrifying challenge of Mises, and then went back to the Ministry of Central Planning, and said, “You’re going to need a bigger computer.”
This mistaken interpretation of the Misesian “calculation” problem persists to today, and it’s getting worse.