Wonder Information Tag

Here’s a letter to a new correspondent: Mr. Jones: Thanks for sharing your thoughts on my recent essay on the importance of Econ 101. While I agree with much that you write, I plead guilty to your charge of “dulling students’ excitement about solving collective challenges through democratic...

(Don Boudreaux) TweetEd Stringham looks back on one year of lockdowns. A slice: This is the new line of the lockdowners. They can’t cite broad-based evidence of any correlation much less causation between lockdowns and virus control. There simply isn’t any, and meanwhile AIER has assembled...

For years, I’ve used the term crony capitalist to describe businesspeople who choose to earn profits by lobbying for subsidies and government regulations suppressing competition. My critics pointed out that crony capitalists are not capitalists.  My critics are right, and the distinction matters. Crony capitalism has...

“Global Warming Has Begun” announced the New York Times in mid-1988, predicting a temperature and sea level rise by 2050 of as much as 9 degrees and 4 feet, respectively.  The majority of East Coast beaches could be gone by 2020, warned the Times in 1995....

In response to the COVID‐19 pandemic, governments around the world issued stay‐at‐home orders, which required that individuals stay at home unless they were engaging in certain activities. Often these orders would designate certain goods and services as “essential” and would permit individuals engaged in the...

[This article is excerpted from chapter one of The Rise and Fall of Society.] It may be that wary beasts of the forest come around to accepting the hunter's trap as a necessary concomitant of foraging for food. At any rate, the presumably rational human animal...