All Posts Tagged With: "unintended consequences"
Incentives and Disincentives: They Really Do Matter!
“If you encourage something, you get more of it. If you discourage something, you get less of it.” Whoever first said that deserves a medal for putting to words one of the most profoundly important elements of human nature. Human beings respond—often powerfully—to both incentives and disincentives. An understanding of this great truth is critical [...]
1Nov2000 | Lawrence W. Reed | 3 comments | ContinuedIt’s the Margin That Counts
Economists, like everyone, have opinions about how the world should be. And it would be disingenuous to claim that economists never let their opinions influence their conclusions and recommendations. But the power of economics is in fundamental concepts that prevent economists from letting their imaginations obscure reality. They may wish that scarcity didn’t exist, that [...]
1Jun2000 | Dwight R. Lee | 17 comments | ContinuedTerms of Impairment
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed by Congress and signed into law by President George Bush in 1990 amid much congratulatory hoopla. “Let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come tumbling down,” the President declared. “Every man, woman, and child with a disability can now pass through once-closed doors into a bright new [...]
1Oct1998 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | ContinuedSmuggled Cigarettes, Unteachable Politicians
John Attarian is an adjunct scholar with the Midland, Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and a nonsmoker. “Only one thing in history is certain: that mankind is unteachable,” Winston Churchill told his dinner guests one night in January 1941.[1] He was discussing international relations, but it goes for politicians’ economic blunders, too. Indeed, Churchill’s [...]
1Sep1998 | John Attarian | 7 comments | ContinuedThe Origins of the Public School
Hardly anyone disputes the contention that the modem public school is seriously flawed. Test scores continue to be poor while metal detectors are found in the more violent schools. Welfare-state liberals argue that schools in poor areas need more money to place them on an equal footing with their richer counterparts. Conservatives usually reply that [...]
1Jul1998 | Robert P. Murphy | 10 comments | ContinuedRegulatory Overkill
Mr. Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a nationally syndicated columnist. He is the author and editor of several books, including The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology (Transaction). There may have been a revolution in the way Washington works over the last two years, but its effects remain hard to [...]
1Oct1996 | Doug Bandow | 1 comment | ContinuedWhy Laws Backfire
Ms. Manley is president of Commercial Tenant Real Estate Representation Ltd., Manhattan. Her articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Inc., and the Wall Street Journal. For thousands of years, laws everywhere have backfired. In ancient Babylon, Sumeria, Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome, for instance, price controls promoted not fairness but famine. During the twentieth [...]
1Aug1996 | Marisa Manley | 1 comment | ContinuedMost Outrageous Government Waste
Mr. Schatz is president of Citizens Against Government Waste. Since my job is to be a watchdog on government waste, I’m often asked about the most outrageous cases. That’s a tough call because government bureaucrats never take care of your money as carefully as you would take care of it yourself. More important, bureaucrats spend [...]
1Jun1996 | Thomas A. Schatz | 46 comments | ContinuedRisk
Who should decide how much risk you should take? Proponents of government safety regulation think that the government has the expertise to decide this issue for you. Professor John Adams of University College London presents a case for more individual autonomy. While the government may have the manpower and the budget to commission numerous studies, [...]
1Feb1996 | John Semmens | 0 comments | ContinuedNature Versus the Central Planners
Mr. Peterson is headmaster at the Pilgrim Academy in Egg Harbor City, New Jersey. He is the author of In His Majesty’s Service (Huntington House), a book an politics to be published in October. For the past 100 years, central planners have used the language and methods of science to explain and justify their attempts [...]
1Aug1995 | Robert A. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Trouble with Keynes
“In the long run we are all dead. Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again.” —John Maynard Keynes (1923)1 Keynes’ remark about the inevitability of death is now famous. It is, however, [...]
1Jul1995 | Russell Shannon | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Economic Safety Net (a parable)
Mr. Beard is an attorney in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Once upon a time, far, far away, people lived in a village on an island where life was difficult. But the people were good and worked hard and the village grew. The people called their island “Economy” and they were happy. On one side of the island [...]
1Jul1995 | Jes Beard | 0 comments | ContinuedIf It Ain’t Broke – Don’t Regulate It
Mr. Brough is with Citizens for a Sound Economy in Washington, D.C. In 1990 the Food and Drug Administration demanded the McCurdy Fish Co. of Lubec, Maine—the last U.S. smoked herring company in the industry—to change its production process to reduce the dangers of botulism. The changes proved to be too costly and John McCurdy [...]
1Jun1995 | Wayne T. Brough | 1 comment | ContinuedEmployer Mandates: A Threat to Employees
Most people who want to force employers to pay for their employees’ health insurance have so far ducked the facts about who pays for “employer” mandates. They’ve had good reason to duck them, because the facts are clear. Economic analysis and economists across the political spectrum who have studied the issue are unanimous that the [...]
1Jan1995 | David R. Henderson | 1 comment | Continued-
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