Washing Machines and China Trade Policy
Washing machines are a big deal. Clothes get dirty and require washing. Around the world, women wash clothes and most wash by hand since they lack access to electricity, or to enough electricity to...
Economic Thinking Posts on Debate Topics
Reduce Rice Subsidies and Promote Free Trade with Asia
Compared to Thailand, the U.S. government spends far less on rice subsidies. According to CBO estimates cited in the Delta Farm Press (April 3, 2015): The Congressional Budget Office estimates that under the previous...
Time to Rethink the Chevron Doctrine
Dan Alban of the Institute for Justice, spoke at the recent Freedom Seminar in Portland, Oregon. Dan debated in high school and at Berry College, so I asked about the NCFCA federal court system...
Overcriminalization: Fish Shredding and “Governing Through Crime”
That same year heavily-armed police raided barber shops around Orlando, Florida; they said they were hunting for guns and drugs but ended up arresting 34 people for “barbering without a licence.” (“Cops or Soldiers,”...
Debate over Criminal Justice Delusions
Heather Mac Donald with an oped in the Wall Street Journal drawn from her longer City Journal article, “The Decriminalization Delusion,” joins the criminal justice reform debate with guns blazing. Mac Donald blasts criminal...
Gains from U.S. Trade Policy with China and the Four Tigers
In the thick of the 1970s and 1980s Cold War, U.S. economic policy with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China favored open trade, international investment, and economic integration. Trade with Japan, Hong...
The Great Escape: Open Trade and Investment with Asian Countries
Angus Deaton just won the Nobel Prize in Economics, and his recent book, The Great Escape: health, wealth and the origins of inequality is highly recommended for Stoa debaters researching the Asia trade topic. In Chapter Six,...
Let Low-Income People in Prisons and Schools Work
Rather than blame politicians for creating, and unions for expanding, restrictive labor regulations, it makes sense to focus on economic misunderstandings. People seem to think jobs are somehow limited and fixed by forces beyond...
Do Your Part to Block Federal Electronic Surveillance!
For $15 you can do your part to reduce Federal electronic surveillance… at least at the very local level. Webpage here.
Miscounted, Mismeasured Fish? That’s a Federal Crime with Jail Time
Of the tens of thousands of regulations that restrict entrepreneurs trying to work each day or build new enterprises in farming, dairy, street-vending, home-baking, political groups most are local and state problems of local and...