Tuesday, March 1, 2011

The Government to the Rescue!

Ha ha, made you look! I always thought cigarette companies weren't really worth defending. But this is a case of me making conclusions before understanding the situation. Here's another step on this road of understanding, courtesy of David Henderson at EconLog.

5 comments:

  1. "Hi! I'm from the government, and I'm here to help" - would make an equally deceiving title to your post.

    Let's bring back Joe Camel.

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  2. BTW: Have you read The Great Stagnation? I read this week while flying to Baltimore. I really enjoyed it. There were only a few items I took issue with - the rest seemed very well-reasoned.

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  3. I've heard about about. Apparently the book itself is much more reasonable than the title suggests. What are the main arguments?

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  4. Tyler boils the great stagnation down to this: "we weren't as rich as we thought we were." Much of "wealth" (inflated home values, etc) was built on the assumption that our economy would continue to grow ~3% forever. Tyler argues this isn't likely to happen, and we'll have to deal with the consequences (like modifying our social programs).

    You wouldn't know it from the title, but he's optimistic about the future.

    I think this book was offered only as an e-book, so you'd need an iPad or Kindle to read it. Loving my Kindle, btw.

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  5. Huh... I have thoughts along the same lines. They way (some) people are reaction to it, I thought it was a Chicken Little book.

    Inflation causes a great illusion that results in big crashes. See the post prior to this one on real stock returns.

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