Most people are really bad at personal, financial planning. The people who make these mistakes are not just ordinary folks. They include highly educated, sophisticated people – including virtually all economists and Wall Street analysts. They almost certainly include you, the reader. So why do so many people get so many things wrong?
In most places the state employee health plan is one of the largest, if not the largest, health plan in the state. So, state legislators who want to reform health care should start with the one plan over which they have a great deal of direct control.… Another reform that is long overdue is the elimination of certificate-of-need (CON) laws, which create huge regulatory obstacles to newcomers who want to open a hospital or a nursing home, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center or even an ambulance service. Studies show that CON laws raise costs and lower quality. For that reason, 15 states have repealed all, or almost all, of them.
Human beings are by nature tribal. We are tribal because our ancestors were tribal. Our ancestors were tribal because tribalism had evolutionary survival value. Fifty thousand years ago, our ancestors lived in small communities of about 150 people. These tribes competed with other tribes for resources, and the competition was often violent and brutal. Loyalty to one’s own group and hostility to members of other groups was a valuable characteristic in tribal combat.
The liberal media is panicking over the prospect of Larry Elder becoming governor of California. An editorial in the New York Times by Farhad Manjoo, for example, declares the Elder candidacy a “looming disaster,” a “liberal nightmare” and a possibility that is “as serious as a heart attack.” For Times editorial writer Paul Krugman, the possibility is even more frightening. Elder, he says, would be a “Trumpist governor” whose election would produce “awesome consequences” – all bad, of course.
Spending Plan, The $3.5 Trillion Mistake!
On Tuesday, 11 September 2021, The Goodman Institute is proud to host our first annual Awards Dinner at 1225 N. Riverfront Blvd in Texas!
Inequality is almost universally condemned by the intellectual elite. But most of the rest of the world doesn’t think inequality is such a bad thing. According to polling by Gallup, there are 138 million people in the world today who would like to immigrate to the United States. Most of these people are poor. They tend to live in egalitarian surroundings – they and their neighbors are all equally poor. (The country with the highest percentage of would-be immigrants is Liberia.) Yet they want to come to a country with a great deal of inequality, knowing they would start out at the bottom of the income ladder.
Reasonable customer service is part and parcel of what one is purchasing from our increasingly small number of mammoth retail companies. But Laurence Kotlikoff writes, “Every so often I focus on what seems, from personal experience, to represent “customer support” bordering on consumer fraud.” Examples: AJ Madison, Anthropologie, and Apple.
What does the average economist know about environmental science? Probably no more than any other reasonably educated person. Yet economists have three talents that are sorely missing from most discussions of environmental policy – particularly policies related to climate change. They understand (1) the scientific method, (2) cost-benefit analysis and (3) how costs and benefits affecting different generations can be evaluated over time. More
Joe Biden says that corporations aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. He also says his plan to raise corporate taxes won’t harm anyone who makes less than $400,000 a year. Virtually all economists know these statements are false. Yet, John Goodman thinks there has ever been a time in recent history when there has been such a large gap between what economists know and what politicians say.