Silent Spring Revisited: Rachel Carson’s Environmentalist Diatribe vs. Science
The root of the opposition to DDT is not science, but the environmentalist moral premise that it is wrong for man to “tamper” with nature.
Economics for the Citizen (Part 5)
The cost of having or doing something is what had to be given up.
Rational Disagreement
My assistant sorts the incoming mail into various categories, such as “critical mail,” “fan mail,” etc. But the so-called critical mail is seldom critical. It may be bombastic or vituperative or full of pop psychology, but it seldom presents a...Economics for the Citizen (Part 4)
Specialization is said to occur when people produce more of a commodity than they consume or plan to consume.
“Transition Costs” of Partially Privatizing Social Security
There’s a lot of discussion in the media about the “transition costs” of partially privatizing Social Security. These “transition costs” are estimated to be $1 trillion to $2 trillion. The specter of this amount of expenditure...Economics for the Citizen (Part 3)
There are four classes of behavior that can be called economic behavior. They are: production, consumption, exchange and specialization.
The Race Card — 2005
The Democratic Party continues to play the race card for political gain. The Reverend Jesse Jackson steamed into Ohio, the so-called battleground state that went for Bush, claiming that Ohioans’ votes failed to count. “The playing field is uneven,”...Economics for the Citizen (Part 2)
Economic theory can’t answer normative questions.
Economics for the Citizen (Part 1)
The first lesson in economic theory is that we live in a world of scarcity.
