Source: EconLog
by Kevin Corcoran

“Thomas Sowell frequently emphasizes the importance of thinking beyond the immediate and obvious impact of some economic policy and thinking through the larger implications. He actually wrote an entire book dedicated to this idea – Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One. A similar and useful exercise to evaluate an idea is to really try to work out not what will unfold next, but what that idea, if true, should imply for the present situation. Here are two common examples where this would come in handy.” (04/23/24)

https://www.econlib.org/ideas-and-implications/

Source: Adam Smith Institute
by Tim Worstall

“The entire concept of net zero — or even dealing with climate change at all — is based upon the idea that not dealing with climate change is more expensive than dealing with it. Now we’ve just got evidence that dealing with it through renewables — those oh so cheap forms of energy collection — is more expensive than we’d thought. 25 million households, £400 per, that’s £10 billion a year. That’s also £10 billion a year forever. So, dealing with climate change is now more expensive than we’d thought it was. The benefit of dealing with it is exactly the same as before. That changes the balance of how much dealing — rather than suffering from — climate change we should be doing.” (04/23/24)

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/renewables-arent-so-cheap-then

Source: RealClearPolitics
by Jeremy Tate

“The commentary class was collectively shocked when new polling this week showed over 90% of Americans across the political spectrum share core principles. More specifically, the vast majority firmly believe in the importance of fundamental freedoms such as the right to vote, equal protection under the law, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion. Students of history – or even of current events in most of the world – know that tribalism is the norm and broad support for the freedoms we have in the United States can hardly be presumed. That Americans agree on such fundamentals in the face of the divisive forces of social-media echo chambers, cable news hyperbole, vitriolic electioneering, and the politicization of culture and commerce is the result of the quietly unifying victory of an otherwise highly politicized force: education.” (04/23/24)

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/04/23/the_secret_force_defending_american_principles_150837.html

Source: Underthrow
by Max Borders

“Underthrow requires more than zeal. It requires spirituality. (Yes, spirituality.) But this is neither New Age nonsense nor do-what-feels-good self-help. It requires discipline.” (04/23/24)

https://underthrow.substack.com/p/the-monk-and-the-missionary

Source: Future of Freedom Foundation
by Jacob G Hornberger

“At the heart of the decades-long war on drugs is the notion that the federal government is people’s daddy. One of the purposes of a daddy is to keep his children from doing bad things. One of the most important parts of being a daddy is to prevent children from doing bad things to themselves, such as putting the wrong things into their mouths. That’s what the drug war is all about it — keeping adult-children from putting bad things into their mouths and punishing them when they do. But adult-children are different from children. Adults are adults. Nonetheless, the drug war converts them into adult-children.” (04/23/24)

https://www.fff.org/2024/04/23/our-drug-war-daddy/

Source: Law & Liberty
by Samuel Gregg

“It’s no exaggeration to say that America is in the midst of one of its fiercest economic policy debates for some time. But the current quarrel between economic nationalists and free marketers extends beyond domestic policy. Whether conducted via long-form articles or duked out on X (formerly Twitter) by dirigiste senators and their free market critics, China looms large in the back-and-forth. The much-debated relationship between trade and national security forms part of that discussion. Yet so too do arguments about whether American policymakers in the late 1990s placed too much faith in markets to shift China towards greater political freedom, and, more generally, how much political change can be expected to flow from expansions of economic liberty. Missing from these disputes is an appreciation of economic liberalism’s place in modern Chinese thought before 1978.” (04/23/24)

https://lawliberty.org/book-review/market-liberalism-chinese-style/

Source: Cobden Centre
by Ryan McMaken

“During the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Trump’s opponents in the Democratic party (and elsewhere) often pointed out that Trump’s protectionism hobbles private markets and the economy overall. Yet, the allegedly anti-protectionist Biden administration has done virtually nothing to end Trump’s protectionists policies put in place from 2017 to 2020. The motivation is unclear, but it is possible that the Biden administration realized that protectionism is a useful political tool. These policies offer a way of punishing opponents, rewarding allies, and pandering to voters. Now that it’s election season, the pandering side of the equation is in full swing.” (04/23/24)

https://www.cobdencentre.org/2024/04/tariffs-are-taxes-on-americans-but-protectionists-pretend-otherwise/