where orders emerge

The letter below, to the New York Times, is an expansion of a comment that I made on this post:

Ted Kennedy’s canonization is too much.  Every day brings the deaths of thousands of people, the vast majority of whom are known only to their families and friends.  These people aren’t mourned by politicians, reporters, or the general public.

Yet almost every one of these unheralded persons has been more productive than has Ted Kennedy – or Chuck Grassley, Nancy Pelosi, the Georges Bush, or any other politician you name, whether he or she be still breathing or buried.

Who installed the windows in my house?  I don’t know.  Yet he provided value to me and never forced his hand into my wallet or his nose into my eating habits.  Who will fly the plane that will carry me home tomorrow from Michigan to Virginia?  I have no idea.  Yet that pilot will render unto me (and dozens of others) a valuable service in exchange for funds that I voluntarily paid to his or her employer.  That pilot doesn’t force me to fly.  Nor does he or she presume to know better than I do what is best for my family and me.

Who caught the fish that I will eat tonight?  Who trucked it from the sea to my hotel?  Who will cook that fish?  Who designed the dishwasher that cleaned the plate and utensils that I will use?

I know almost none of the millions of people whose daily efforts make possible my life and that of countless other Americans.  These people don’t hatch grand plans for arrogantly re-working society.  They offer only to deal voluntarily with me and with others, never pretending – unlike Mr. Kennedy – to be endowed with a mysterious genius and a saintly inspiration justifying haughty intrusions into the affairs of others.

Politicians are mortals.  But as their greedy lust for power and glory reveals, they are mortals especially flawed.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

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Here’s a letter that I sent today to Prof. Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP):

Dear Prof. Nelson:

In the mass e-mail that you sent on Thursday to us college professors, you brag of how your organization, AAUP, is working to end “at-whim employment” of adjunct and other part-time professors.  You want all such professors to be dismissable only “with cause.”

Sounds noble.  You will, however, pardon my skepticism.

If you make the dismissal of adjunct professors more difficult, you’ll thereby raise colleges’ costs of hiring adjuncts.  As a result, fewer adjuncts will be hired.  So it’s doubtful that your efforts will help the very persons whose well-being you claim to champion.

What is clear, though, is that success at increasing the cost of hiring adjunct professors will benefit those of us who work as full-time faculty.  Because adjuncts compete with full-time faculty, making adjuncts more costly to hire will raise the demand for, and hence raise the salaries of, full-time faculty.  It will also prompt colleges to hire greater numbers of full-time faculty.  Each of these consequences benefits us full-timers, both by fattening our wallets and by improving our access to full-time scholars in our fields.

But our windfall will be paid for by unemployed part-time faculty – and by students and taxpayers who’ll have to foot the bill for the resulting higher cost of supplying classroom instruction.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

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Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, PERC’s Terry Anderson cautions that, if Uncle Sam’s track record at supplying health-care to American Indians is any guide, Obamacare will be the death of us all.

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Here’s a letter that I sent earlier today to the Gray Lady:

Noting that “it’s important to have some perspective,” Paul Krugman argues that while Uncle Sam’s budget deficit is now large, “we also have a huge economy, which means that things aren’t as scary as you might think” (”Till Debt Does Its Part,” August 28).  Whew!  No cause for much concern, for the size of America’s GDP swamps the size of the budget deficit.

During the Bush years, however, Mr. Krugman preached a different gospel.  For example, in his February 11, 2005 column – devoted to condemning tax cuts – he insisted that “the deficit is indeed a major problem.”

So let’s take Mr. Krugman’s advice and get some perspective.  In 2005, when Mr. Krugman insisted that government’s budget deficit was “indeed a major problem,” that deficit was 2.5 percent of GDP.  Today, when Mr. Krugman no longer is very concerned about the budget deficit, that deficit will be about 11 percent of GDP.  Hmmmm….

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

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Some protectionists argue that high tariffs and other trade restrictions are often necessary to keep a country’s culture from changing, or from changing too rapidly.  Other protectionists argue that high tariffs and other trade restrictions are often necessary to allow “infant industries” to be born, grow, and mature in the home country.

These two often-heard pleas for restrictions on consumers’ freedom to spend as they wish do not sit easily beside each other.

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Andy Morriss, my friend and co-blogger over at Market Correction, sent this letter recently to the Financial Times:

Sir,

I was delighted to see Lord Turner’s call to “curb” the U.K.’s financial industry as  I had always thought that the “Silly Party” was an invention of Monty Python. Instead I find that it seems to have placed a leader in a top position in the UK government! Once the British government finishes with Lord Turner’s call to “reduce the size” of the financial sector by “apply[ing] special taxes to it,” I am sure that many people in New York, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, and elsewhere will be quick to suggest additional measures to ensure that London’s financial industry is no longer “swollen. ” And once Lord Turner is done shrinking the financial industry down to “a socially reasonable size,” we Americans would appreciate it if he could next whittle down your aerospace and defense industries (which inconveniently compete with ours), your insurance industry (Lloyd’s is just too big for a country Britain’s size), and your energy industries (BP is much, much too large for Britain) to a more modest and appropriate size. Perhaps the original Silly Party M.P. for Luton, Tarquin Fin-tim-lim-bim-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F’tang-F’tang-Olè-Biscuitbarrel, can be lured from retirement to help Lord Turner with this vital mission.

Andrew P. Morriss

H. Ross & Helen Workman Professor of Law and Business

Professor, Institute for Government and Public Affairs

University of Illinois

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If colonialism paves the highway to riches for colonial powers, why were Russians in the former Soviet Union so miserably poor?  Milton Friedman explains, in this 1978 video clip.

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Bruce Yandle does a great job analyzing “Cash for Clunkers.“  (HT Rob Raffety)

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Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the Washington Post:

Praising Pres. Obama’s reappointment of Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman, Robert Samuelson says that “We will never know whether the world might have suffered a depression if Bernanke’s Fed had not responded so aggressively.  But that is plausible” (”For Obama, the Only Choice for the Fed,” August 26).

Counterfactual history is inherently hazardous, but that Dr. Bernanke’s unprecedented aggressiveness was key to saving the economy is nowhere near as “plausible” as Mr. Samuelson thinks.

First, it’s unclear that the worst of our economic woes are behind us.  Second, and more importantly, the economic downturn of 1920-21 was in many ways deeper than the current downturn.  Wholesale prices during that recession fell by 45 percent; the Dow fell by 19 percent; and industrial output fell by 23 percent. Yet within a year of its trough the economy had recovered fully with no intervention by the Fed.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

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