Reprinted from the Freeman Food has always been political. Throughout history, armies have razed crops and demographics have shifted in response to hunger. Political correctness now drives the civics of food with bountiful nations attempting to dictate what people can
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Back in September the pro-Affordable Care Act (ACA) website Vox touted a new working paper by Jonathan Gruber and Robin McKnight. There was nothing explicitly dishonest in the study or the coverage of it, but Vox’s readers would walk away
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For some time now, the scientific community has had its eye on taking down popular television host and alleged physician, Dr. Oz. Notorious for being a publicity grabber and pushing cures on his fawning audience that are dubious at best,
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With reporters of the Western World losing their heads over the outbreak of the Ebola virus, it’s helpful to put it in the context of other diseases. This year roughly 8,000 West Africans have contracted the disease, mostly limited to
In the healthcare industry, a certificate of need, also known by the acronym CON, is an anticompetitive licensing restriction allegedly designed to promote fair competition by requiring hospitals to demonstrate the need for certain projects and services in order to
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In his work A Critique of Interventionism, Ludwig von Mises concluded that an endless progression of interventions was the inevitable consequence of otherwise well-intentioned policy makers “In a private property order isolated intervention fails to achieve what its sponsors hoped
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In June the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) updated its forecasts regarding the “individual mandate” component of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as “ObamaCare.” Recall that the individual mandate is the tax levied on Americans who commit the
I’ve been following the wonkish analysis of the Affordable Care Act-abbreviated as the ACA or often referred to as “ObamaCare”-from the beginning. I’ve noticed that even though most Americans think it grants “universal coverage” the same way that anybody can walk
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Private health care is inevitable in Canada. Does that sound crazy? Decades ago, socialized medicine became an iconic institution in the country. It wasn’t just the establishment of “free” healthcare for all, but an existential “right” created by a loving
Paul Krugman assures his readers that his predictions and interpretations of economic events come out with flying colors. But that’s often because he ex post sets an unbelievably low threshold for success. Take for example his latest post on the
Questions of liberty can sometimes be difficult. Not everything fits together in a nice, easily-understood package. Morality often gets involved, along with emotional ties that complicate matters. Logical consistency should always trump passion; but it’s sometimes hard to shove the
Reprinted from the Press and Journal The era of cheap housing may finally be upon us. In China, the private firm WinSun is using 3D printers to produce up to 10 houses a day. Thanks to the decreased labor cost
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It certainly generated amusement among critics of Paul Krugman when Gawker reported that he was being paid $25,000/month to do very little work on behalf of the City University of New York’s new program on income inequality. I truly wasn’t going
Paul Krugman has made another installment in his campaign to promote the wonders of ObamaCare. In this post, Krugman laments that New Yorkers of all people don’t recognize how great the new health insurance regime is working out. He tells
Remember when you were in college and your professors all went into fits of red-faced, paralyzing rage at the very idea of using Wikipedia as a source for a paper? Well then, you clearly didn’t go to medical school, because
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Robespierre reputedly welcomed the bloody French Revolution with the chilling statement: “One can’t expect to make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Versions of the quote have also been attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to Joseph Stalin. In these cases, the phrase signifies
The Ontario Government’s war on drugs is entering a new and more dangerous phase that is bringing increasing violence to the most unexpected of places: the province’s pharmacies. One normally thinks of pharmacies as being places of peace and quietude.
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The good thing about the Internet is that there is a Hayekian safety net: When a bunch of free-market economists are idiots and overlook an obvious point, eventually somebody comes along to rescue them. For today’s example, we have the
After publishing my recent post discussing how the proponents of the Affordable Care Act (ACA or “ObamaCare”) were making a distinction without a (significant) difference on the terms “substitution effect” versus “income effect,” I saw that Scott Sumner over at
With the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO’s) recent announcement that the Affordable Care Act (aka “ObamaCare”) will lead to a long-term reduction of employment of (the equivalent of) 2.5 million full-time jobs, the economics pundits are arguing over the significance of
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