Source: Foundation for Economic Education
by Peter Jacobsen
“As we roll through the middle of February, we’re getting to the point of the year where most people start to abandon their New Year’s resolutions. According to research by Dr. Michelle Rozen, 94% of people fail their resolutions within two months. However, this doesn’t mean resolutions are a bad thing. New Year’s resolutions make good economic sense. People want to improve, but monitoring whether you’ve actually improved in something is costly. As such, using the beginning (and end) of a year as a benchmark provides a low-cost way of ensuring self-monitoring. Maybe many fail, but New Year’s provides a good place to start either way. For many, New Year’s resolutions involve reading more or losing weight. However, I’m noticing an increasing number of people centering their resolutions around hobbies.” (02/19/25)
“Last Sunday, 60 Minutes featured tyrannical German prosecutors boasting about persecuting private citizens who made comments that officialdom disapproved. Three prosecutors explained how the government was entitled to launch pre-dawn raids and lock up individuals who criticized politicians, complained about immigrant crime waves, or otherwise crossed the latest revised boundary lines of acceptable thoughts. In a craven slant that would have cheered any mid-twentieth century European dictator, 60 Minutes glorified the crackdown: ‘Germany is trying to bring some civility to the world wide web by policing it in a way most Americans could never imagine in an effort to protect discourse.’ Nothing ‘protects discourse’ like a jackboot kick aside the head of someone who insulted a German politician on Facebook, right?” (02/19/25)
“The past month has generated something close to despair in anyone who cares about effective governance as a force in people’s lives. Haphazard firings, rapid dismantling of vital government agencies, devaluing of basic science, and commandeering of government IT systems are all part of a power grab that threatens to turn our democracy into a cult of personality. It’s hard to imagine anything positive coming out of this. And yet. On Tuesday, the new leaders of the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division both released statements saying that they would continue to follow the 2023 merger guidelines, and not seek to make any changes to them, at least in the near future. Those guidelines reflect the understanding of antitrust statutes and jurisprudence as envisioned by Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter, the predecessors at those agencies.” (02/20/25)
“St. Felix publicly declared that he believed with 79% probability that COVID had a natural origin. He was brought before the Emperor, who threatened him with execution unless he updated to 100%. When St. Felix refused, the Emperor was impressed with his integrity, and said he would release him if he merely updated to 90%. St. Felix refused again, and the Emperor, fearing revolt, promised to release him if he merely rounded up one percentage point to 80%. St. Felix cited Tetlock’s research showing that the last digit contained useful information, refused a third time, and was crucified.” (02/19/25)
“The thing about Donald Trump is, he’s Donald Trump. Briefly set aside any old-fashioned moral considerations about Donald Trump’s low personal character — as a purely analytical matter, that low character is the most direct and comprehensive way to understand what it is the administration is actually doing. That ‘character is destiny’ is a political truism, but it is even more true in the case of Trump than in the case of most politicians, because Trump, being overburdened with an excess of self, has no political interests or values independent of his self-interest, which should be understood in terms that are only partly financial and in the main psychological. Whether as a politician or a peddler of knockoff watches, Donald Trump’s business is being Donald Trump. The notion that Trump is some kind of master negotiator is one of the silliest aspects of the Trump cult.” (02/18/25)
“The most dangerous thing about the Trump presidency is its risk of causing some people to regain faith in government. This would be a mistake. Of course, it’s making the opposition lose faith in government. They wanted to be the ones imposing their will for the next four years, and this caught them off guard. It derailed their ‘progress,’ progress that others experience as a descent into the Dark Ages. What I see as progress — dismantling some of the federal government — others call corruption. The case could be made that corruption is being rooted out and destroyed. This is also mistaken. It’s not corruption; it’s government working exactly as designed. The problem is in the design, not in the implementation and not in the details.” (02/19/25)
“College economics students know that a tariff is a tax charged to importers when a good enters the country and that this tax is generally transferred to domestic consumers by way of an equivalent price increase. So what Trump is really saying is, ‘very simple, a foreign state charges a tax on its residents, my own state will charge an equivalent tax to our own residents.’ Your tribe or collective harms its own, the tribe or collective I run will cause an equivalent harm to its members; it’s that simple. Not only does elementary economic theory demonstrate this conclusion, but it is continually confirmed by experience to the point where the mere announcement or expectation of domestic tariffs starts pushing up the price of the imported goods and of the substitute domestic goods.” (02/19/25)
“News of Trump’s plans to gut the Department of Education has certainly made waves. But given that the federal government has a limited role in K-12 education and limited control over education spending, too few are focused on considering what public education under Trump’s second term might look like. If Uncle Sam is out of the K-12 business, at least President Trump won’t be using his power to interfere with local schools, right? If only! Trump, working with a GOP-controlled Congress, can inflict damage not just to American education but through it. The track record of MAGA-run states, the policy designs of Project 2025, and Trump’s own statements reveal a clear interest in using schools to sunder the separation of church and state.” (02/19/25)
