All Posts Tagged With: "regulation"
Is Ethanol a Good Choice for Consumers?
It’s is a good deal — for ethanol producers — but it destroys the wealth of others.
26Jan2011 | William L. Anderson | 12 comments | ContinuedThe More Things Change…
From the Washington Post: The president’s recently departed budget director is joining Citigroup. The New York Federal Reserve Bank’s derivatives expert is joining Goldman Sachs. And numerous investigators from the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission are joining Wall Street’s top law firms. The vast overhaul of financial regulations and the renewed intensity [...]
30Dec2010 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedRules, Regulation, and Mixed Martial Arts
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) illustrates well the benefits of limiting rules and regulations, and provides an example of immense success despite—rather than because of—government intervention. The UFC, which hosts mixed martial arts (MMA) events, has grown immensely popular in recent years. In the early years, the mid-1990s, the sport had a limited number of [...]
24Nov2010 | and Thomas Snyder | 4 comments | ContinuedDoctors Are Government Employees
Doctors speak frequently among themselves about problems in medicine: decreased collections; inability to spend more time with patients; difficulty getting consults from specialists, especially for Medicare/Medicaid patients; enormous time wasted with patients who aren’t really sick (sometimes they’re old and lonely; sometimes they’re unemployed with nothing else to do—visits to the doctor for the poor [...]
22Oct2010 | Theodore Levy | 4 comments | ContinuedObamacare Reality Bites
One might think that letting government officials exercise discretion in the enforcement of bad regulations would be a good thing. I’m not so sure.
22Oct2010 | Sheldon Richman | 14 comments | ContinuedHow to Create the Illusion of Low Taxes
To the surprise of opponents of big government, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimates that taxes at all levels of government take only 9.2 percent of our income, the lowest rate since Harry Truman was president. USA Today and various news-media personalities, like Chris Matthews of MSNBC, have used this statistic to hammer [...]
22Sep2010 | D.W. MacKenzie | 1 comment | ContinuedRegulatory Failure by the Numbers
Between the current financial mess and the debate over carbon dioxide emissions controls, there is a lot of talk about regulation these days. We are told, for example, that the recession would have been prevented if proper regulations had been in place. While it is true that (by definition) the “right” regulations would have prevented [...]
25Aug2010 | and Robert L. Bradley Jr. | 5 comments | ContinuedFinancial Regulation Snake Oil
Recent turmoil set off by the threat of Greek insolvency shows how fast markets change. Fear about the inability of European governments to pay their debts caused the 2010 turbulence. By contrast, the 2008–2009 havoc was rooted in the collapse of property values. The next crisis will be about something else, possibly another government’s debt. [...]
25Aug2010 | Chidem Kurdas | 1 comment | ContinuedWhat Does the Oil Spill Prove?
You’ve got to hand it to the people who dislike free markets. They see them everywhere, especially wherever any serious problem arises. That no free market exists within a thousand miles makes no difference whatsoever. Take the oil spill in the Gulf. Market opponents are having a field day. They say this finally demonstrates the [...]
25Aug2010 | Sheldon Richman | 3 comments | ContinuedCan Government Save Us from Manmade Disasters?
Overcoming environmental abuse is not likely to be achieved by governmental dictation.
16Aug2010 | James L. Payne | 7 comments | ContinuedWhat Is “Comprehensive Legislation” Anyway?
Have you noticed the government panacea for every problem? Oil spill? Comprehensive energy legislation. Bank failures? Comprehensive financial legislation. Medically uninsured? Comprehensive health care legislation. Just one problem. No one can tell you what comprehensive legislation actually means. Literally, it would have to mean that nothing can be done except under the watchful eye of [...]
16Jul2010 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedMugged by the State
Most Americans believe that if they raise their kids well, attend church, work 9 to 5, and pay their taxes, they can pretty much go about life unhindered by the government. Certainly there are the annoyances and trivialities that occur when visiting the department of motor vehicles or the post office, but grisly tales of [...]
8Jul2010 | Jude Blanchette | 0 comments | ContinuedProtecting America’s Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation
George Stigler once compared regulating on the basis of corporate misdeeds to an audition at which the second singer is selected after only the first has sung. When it comes to food and health, Philip Hilts, a veteran medical reporter, runs the same sort of abbreviated audition. His latest book is an eminently readable, amply [...]
7Jul2010 | Sam Kazman | 1 comment | ContinuedHow Not to Respond to Higher Gasoline Prices
Mix together surging gasoline prices, a conflict in the Middle East, and a presidential election year, and what do you get? Given the sorry state of economic education among our political elites, you are likely to find bad energy – policy proposals and an increased willingness to intervene in the very market forces that are [...]
1Jul2010 | and David N. Laband | 2 comments | ContinuedFinancial Fiasco: How America’s Infatuation with Homeownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis
Free-market greed stands accused of undermining the world financial system, but that is a mistaken analysis, writes Johan Norberg. The Swedish author made famous by his book In Defence of Global Capitalism is back to provide an explanation for the current financial crisis. Many factors led to the global financial fiasco, Norberg writes, including a [...]
20May2010 | Waldemar Ingdahl | 20 comments | ContinuedNuclear Energy Should Be Subsidized?
In a March 5 Los Angeles Times op-ed, “Jump-starting Nuclear Energy,” Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore, who now co-chairs the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, lauds the Obama administration for its decision to “guarantee loans for two advance-design nuclear plants in Georgia.” Nuclear energy diversifies our energy portfolio and doesn’t pollute the air the way fossil [...]
20May2010 | Art Carden and Mike Hammock | 9 comments | ContinuedThey Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators
What a stunning book! They Made America is a big glorious coffee-table kind of book that deserves to be picked up and read, not just dusted occasionally. Harold Evans (actually, Sir Harold—this former editor of the London Times was knighted in 2004) has given us a marvelous compendium of short biographies on American inventors and [...]
18May2010 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | Continued-
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