The State Must Have Something to Hide

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Any terrorist who does not believe that we are living in a free society but under a disguised tyranny (the sort he would like to establish under a different mantle) would have assumed that, at the very least, his phone calls could be logged and his emails read. The only people not to believe so were honest citizens who thought they were living in a free society. So remind me what are the reasons for hiding the Surveillance State? Why do you hide your surveillance programs if you have nothing to hide?

US Government Is Already Broke

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Published in the Financial Post (www.nationalpost.com), January 25, 2013

In Tuesday’s Financial Times, well-known columnist Martin Wolf argues that “America’s fiscal policy is not in crisis.” “The federal government,” he writes,“is not on the verge of bankruptcy.” “This,” Wolf admits, “is a highly controversial statement.”

Indeed, many analysts believe that the U.S. federal government is bankrupt. They include, among others, economists Jeffrey Hummel of San Jose State University and Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University. As early as 2006, Kotlikoff wrote an article in the journal of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, asking the question “Is the United States Bankrupt,” to which he answered affirmatively. Continue reading →

Obama’s Inaugural Address: the Citizens’ Citizens

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Presidential inaugurations are, at best, similar to royal marriages in England, where simple people dream of the Prince Charming; at worst, they resemble nationalist orgies where people proclaim their faith in, and submission to, their dear leader. There was both in Barack Obama’s inauguration today. Continue reading →

James Buchanan (1919-2013)

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Published in the Financial Post (www.nationalpost.com), January 10, 2013 [Note that the copy editor mistakenly removed the quote marks around "politics without romance," which is an Buchanan's expression.]

If one expression can capture the work of James Buchanan, who died yesterday aged 93, it is “politics without romance.” His approach generated a whole school of economic analysis called “Public Choice.” Closely associated to Buchanan were Gordon Tullock, Richard Wagner, Geoffrey Brennan, and other economists working mainly at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and, later, George Mason University.

For his work in this field, Buchanan won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.

Buchanan’s starting point was so simple enough that it now seems rather obvious. Continue reading →

The Price of Gold

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At the end of November, Goldman Sachs predicted a short-term (over a three-month horizon) increase in the price of gold, followed by a downward trend through 2014. Accompanied by a new, bullish outlook for the American economy, this bearish forecast for gold made the financial news (see for example the Financial Times of December 7, 2012). Since then, the price of gold has been trending downwards, but things could change.

This sort of forecast raises interesting questions on the factors that influence the price of the yellow metal. Continue reading →

Beyond Madoff ’s Wildest Dreams

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That’s how American politicians and bureaucrats are dreaming. In the current issue of Regulation, see my review of Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns, The Clash of Generations (MIT Press, 2012).

My book on the same topic, The Public Debt Problem: A Comprehensive Guide (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) will be out in a few days.

The NRA Proposal

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[Revised version: The original version of this post contained an error in the calculation of the budget required by the NRA proposal.]

The National Rifle Association’s proposal to put a policeman in every school is not bad given the circumstances. Refusing to protect children with armed force when necessary in the vain hope to “de-escalate violence“, as an activist puts it, is tragically naïve. Let the madmen and children killers de-escalate violence first!

The NRA’s statement contains words of wisdom about which one wonders why it is apparently so revolting to so many people:

But what if, when Adam Lanza started shooting his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday, he had been confronted by qualified, armed security?
Will you at least admit it’s possible [emphasis in original] that 26 innocent lives might have been spared? Is that so abhorrent to you that you would rather continue to risk the alternative?

“Members of Congress”, the NRA statement also points out, “work in offices surrounded by Capitol Police officers”.

The NRA’s statement, however, is not above criticism. Continue reading →

The Rise of the Young Mass Killer

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The Sandy Hook shooting raises issues that are often forgotten by both the pro-gun and the anti-gun side.

The first issue, ignored by the pro-gun side, is that the availability of guns does, other things being equal, increase the potential damage that madmen can do. A spate of knife attacks on schoolchildren in China has been recently observed, but with fewer deaths than for gun attacks in Scotland, Norway, or America. Continue reading →