Part 3: Declining Inequality This is part three of three-part series. In part one of this series, I discussed different kinds of inequality and which ones we should be concerned about. In part two of this series, I discussed measuring inequality. You can find part two here.   There is a widespread but mistaken belief that the tremendous progress across a range of metrics has coincided with increasing global inequality, but in fact the data in the Inequality of Human Progress Index (IHPI) created by myself and Vincent Geloso unambiguously show a decline in global inequality. That’s true on ..read more

The observation of social phenomena, sometimes apparently innocuous ones, can help confirm theories of society or invalidate them. I found an interesting story about residential generators in Kris Frieswick, “Your Generator Is Noisy as Hell. But Your Neighbors Don’t Have to Hate You for It,” Wall Street Journal, July 18, 2024. A residential generator is useful during a power outage, and close to essential if you are working from home. Properly speaking, no single good is literally “essential” as substitution possibilities always exist. One can bring his laptop to work in whatever coffee house ..read more

The US economy has never had a soft landing. It is possible that we are about to have one. If so, it will likely be due to the fact that a massive surge in immigration has provided a big soft pillow for the economy to land on. [Note: I will not address the question of whether this immigration is good in any overall sense, just the impact on the macroeconomy.] Some of the recent economic data is about as bizarre as I’ve ever seen: Q2 NGDP up 5.2% annual rate, 5.8% over 12 months Q2 RGDP up 2.8% annual rate, 3.1% over 12 months And yet the household survey suggests that fewer that 200,000 ne ..read more

In this Future of Liberty discussion, Governor Mitch Daniels interviews Philip Hamburger, legal scholar and founder of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, about the administrative state. The two agree that federal agencies have committed at least two sets of sins. First, they have unduly and unnecessarily violated the rights of citizens, and second they have done so on shadowy constitutional grounds.  Professor Hamburger attributes the rise of the administrative state to two intertwined factors. First, Congress has a strong political incentive to over delegate—especially  when it comes ..read more

For all those who have taken an economics course, you’ve no doubt heard plenty about market failure. I suspect you’ve heard relatively less about government failure. Part of the allure of the public choice tradition for me has always been its very clear explication of the latter. But in this episode, leave it to perennial favorite Mike Munger to put a wrinkle in my contemplative ease. For starters, Munger places the earliest public choice insights well before the typical story (it even includes Pigou!). Munger describes the history of the concept of market failure as resulting from the qu ..read more

This is part two of three-part series. In part one of this series, I discussed different kinds of inequality and which ones we should be concerned about. You can find part one on Understanding Inequality here and part three on Declining Inequality here.   Part 2: Measuring Inequality Adam Smith was well aware that money is not the sum total of well-being; he once opined that “the chief part of human happiness arises from the consciousness of being beloved.” Smith would easily comprehend why someone might choose greater flexibility over higher pay to spend more time with loved ones and wou ..read more

Should we want the greatest good for the greatest number? (And, incidentally, should the “we” mean a numerical majority?) The Trolley problem in philosophy raised the issue. I was reminded of that in an interesting article by economist and philosopher Michael Munger, “Adam Smith Discovered (and Solved!) the Trolley Problem” (June 28, 2023), as well as in a follow-up Econtalk podcast. The precise form of the Trolley problem was formulated by British philosopher Philippa Foot in a 1967 article. Imagine you see a runaway trolley speeding down a steep street and about to hit and kill five men work ..read more

  I was talking with a fellow tennis player during a break in a game. I’m at my cottage in Canada, and we play 3 on 3, which sounds weird but is a real kick. He told me that he’s a socialist progressive and said that his beef with capitalism is the inequality it creates. He had in mind by “capitalism” the system that both Canada and the U.S. have. I replied that you couldn’t state that the current degree of inequality is due to capitalism because we don’t have capitalism; we have a mixed economy. I pointed out that term “mixed economy” is a good one. I came across it in Paul Samuelson’s i ..read more

My attention was recently drawn to a headline declaring that Washington, the state I grew up in, would no longer require aspiring lawyers to pass the bar exam in order to become practicing lawyers. I did a bit of reading on the subject and it turns out this decision was motivated by DEI concerns: During a September presentation before the Washington State Bar Association Board of Governors, Washington Supreme Court Justice Raquel Montoya-Lewis, one of the chairs of the Bar Licensure Task Force, said the movement comes in part “from law students who have raised issues about equity, not just in ..read more

This is part one of three-part series. Over the past two and a half centuries, the world has seen significant progress. People live longer, are richer and better educated, and enjoy greater political freedom. (I previously explored the role of cities as engines of such progress for the Liberty Fund’s AdamSmithWorks project). But has that progress been enjoyed by only a few? Has the improvement in living conditions accrued mainly to a small elite, leaving much of the world behind? What many don’t realize is that these improvements have indeed been widely shared. It seems that globalization and ..read more