Government officials like to claim they are doing something about reducing poverty. The trouble is, of course, that what they are doing makes things worse. Here on Income Tax Day, we recommend that next time, they should do nothing.

One of the great myths of US history is that Herbert Hoover was a laissez-faire president. In truth, he intervened in the economy more than any of his predecessors, creating the crisis known as the Great Depression. His successor made things even worse.

The subtitle is Hw Popular Misconceptions about Inflation, Prices, and Value Create Bad Policy.  I am happy to have blurbed this book, here is part of the Amazon description:

Was inflation’s recent spike exacerbated by corporate greed? Do rent controls really help the needy? Are U.S. health care prices set in a Wild West marketplace? Do women get paid less than men for the same work, and do they pay more than men for the same products? The War on Prices is an eye-opening book that answers all these burning questions and more, as top economists debunk popular misconceptions about inflation, prices, and value.

The post Ryan Bourne’s *The War on Prices* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

“I have one partner now with three kids. He is transmasc, and he’s radical about the way he raises them. They’re radically home-schooled. They’re 17 and nonbinary, 6 and 5. They know everything in age-appropriate ways. They’ve seen their mommy undergo the transmasc experience, seen their mom become who they really are.”

5 and 6!  Here is their latest polyamory story, the tone of the story, including the treatment of the children, seems to be entirely normal or possibly positive?  (I have nothing against polyamory per se.)  Is no one at the NYT made uncomfortable by this?  Is it permissible to speak up internally on such issues?  Or not?  The stronger left-wing take would be that this is one of the better arguments for public education, namely that parent-dominated cults can truly harm children, most of all when they control their education.

The post Does the NYT not recognize child abuse? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

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… is from page 422 of Robert Bork’s masterful 1978 book, The Antitrust Paradox:

Competition in open markets reflects the ideal of equality of opportunity, while antitrust’s longstanding and growing concern for the small and less efficient reflects a preference for equality of outcome. Outcomes are not equal in open competition, hence the pressure for more intervention by law. Nor can equality of outcome be achieved by making the slow faster, that being beyond the powers of legal compulsion, but only by holding the faster back.

DBx: In part because of the influence of Bork’s work, antitrust regulation and jurisprudence from the late 1970s until very recently took a turn for the better. It became much less hostile than it was in earlier years to successful, creative entrepreneurship and competition. Unfortunately, many people high up today in America’s antitrust bureaucracy would return antitrust to being a tool to restrain the creative and punish the successful (and, hence, reduce economic prosperity to the masses).

The post Quotation of the Day… appeared first on Cafe Hayek.