Newmark's Door

As I believe I've written here before, Craig Newmark Primary is a mensch.

An update on the famous Simon-Ehrlich bet.

Cue Mr. Rogers's voice: "Can you say 'fracking,' boys and girls? I knew you could."

A summary of William Easterly's key contentions. 

This one is great and should be engraved on plaques and given to every politician and policymaker: "A few simple, core Econ 101 principles have stood the test of time, and let’s just try to stick to those."

Steven Greenhut expresses the problem with California state government very concisely:

California officials have an incredible knack for proposing dubious, government solutions to problems that don’t actually exist, while ignoring the real problems that are under their purview.

Thomas Hazlett interviews Sowell for Reason 38 years after their first interview. Some things have changed . . . and some things haven't.

Yes. If people are really worried about "monopoly," let them first address all the government supported ones first before they even think about the private sector. 

One good place to start would be with the $200 billion or so annual cost for occupational licensing.

Related: "Don’t believe the ‘monopoly’ hype".

Even worse than the 6-year-old is Joan:

The worst case I've encountered was that of a disabled lady, who I'll call Joan. Joan, who was confined to a wheelchair, decided to try to write a book (a children's book) - one of the few things she could physically do.

To Joan's surprise, the book did well and she started receiving royalty checks - roughly $20,000 per year - for a number of years. Every year she contacted Social Security and asked if she could continue to receive Social Security disability benefits given her royalty income. Each time the Social Security officials told her that royalty income was different from labor income and does not trigger the system's Earnings Test, which reduces one's benefits 50 cents on the dollar for all earnings above a threshold.

Ten years later, Joan received a $300,000 bill from Social Security demanding immediate repayment of benefits, which the Social Security Administration "incorrectly," under its revised view, paid Joan over more than a decade.

Pretty devastaing review. The only good news here is this:

Fortunately, only a small fraction of CAHSR’s projected cost—$1.4 billion out of nearly $100 billion total—has been spent so far.

"If you’ve ever dealt with someone whose performance stinks, and they’re not only clueless that their performance stinks but they’re confident that their performance is good, you likely saw the Dunning-Kruger Effect in action."