How can the federal government encourage low-cost, high-quality medical care? There are basically two approaches: a bottom-up, market-based approach and a top-down command-and-control approach: The former is based on competition, markets and economic incentives; the latter is based on rules, regulations, fines and penalties. The former gets the economic incentives right for all of the […]

Just after President Washington’s birthday celebration, the Wall Street Journal reported that the protests beginning in Wisconsin had spread to a dozen other states including Montana. I find this a fitting tribute to the wisdom of America’s founders—and to Wisconsin, often a harbinger of political reform. First, consider the Founding Fathers. They well understood the […]

There is one group of workers who have signed a consent decree with the federal government, agreeing to never form a union. Do you know who they are? Answer below the fold. The economics of unions is quite simple. Like medieval guilds, the goal of a modern union is to monopolize the supply of labor […]

From USA Today (January 16, 2011) Most people intuitively know that the worst thing government can do in the middle of the deepest recession in 70 years is enact policies that increase the expected cost of labor. Yet that is exactly what happened last spring, with the passage of the health care reform bill, says […]

We’re celebrating a happy birthday with dear friends. Not every culture celebrates these mile markers of life’s journey, but Americans have traditionally done so. This, I suspect, is related to optimistic expectations about our future. Some birthdays demarcate an important change in life status. The twelfth birthday is associated with Christian confirmation and the thirteenth […]

From The Wall Street Journal (January 4, 2011) The least surprising event of 2010 was that, in the wake of new federal limits on how credit-card issuers can price risk and adjust interest rates, more Americans had to go to payday lenders, pawn shops and local loan sharks in order to get credit. It’s simply […]

Former VP Dick Cheney recently announced that having suffered five heart attacks, he is interested in a heart transplant. I offer my best wishes for success—and for multiple reasons. In addition to prolonging his life, should his operation occur it will focus attention on reforming our thinking regarding organ transplants. This issue is economically and […]

Here is a story well known, but worth reviewing and appreciating. It’s one to share as environmental concerns grow. Its implications are increasingly important. Essentially, in ecology as in economics, many actions and beliefs are interdependent. It’s difficult to do one thing that doesn’t affect others. This has major ethical as well as environmental implications. […]

I have decided to devote my first Health Alert of the New Year to “tolerance” and “rational thought” — terms that are rarely conjoined. The next time you are in an argument with someone over a public policy, stop and ask yourself: Can you summarize your opponent’s position in words that he would recognize and […]

Janus is the Roman god of beginnings and endings, comings and goings, and time. As we enter January 2011, we sense that time is speeding up. Perhaps this feeling is a sign of age, but likely it is related to the increased connectivity of our lives. The word “surge” has, well, surged to popularity in […]