I had another dream, I had another life
A few years ago, I had a post about the Simon-Ehrlich wager in which economist Julian Simon won his bet against professional fearmonger Paul Ehrlich (who still won’t shut up). The evidence continues to mount that Simon was correct. Recently GMU economist Bryan Caplan reported on his own Simonian bet with Tyler Cowen and David Balan. … Read more
My article on the LDS Church and immigration should be out–hopefully by the end of the month–in the next issue of BYU Studies Quarterly. In it, I tackle five common objections to immigration: Immigrants “steal” native jobs. Immigrants depress native wages. Immigrants undermine host country culture and institutions. Immigrants are a fiscal burden and increase … Read more
“[M]aking the case for liberalism is a Sisyphean task,” writes Will Wilkinson at the Niskanen Center. “If the old truths are not updated for each new age, they will slip from our grasp and lose our allegiance. The terms in which those truths have been couched will become hollow, potted mottoes, will fail to galvanize, … Read more
Both before and after the election results, Trump’s supporters were lambasted as racist, misogynist bigots. But do these insults work? Will shaming change anyone’s mind? If not, how do you convince people to drop their prejudices? As Vox reports: “a frank, brief conversation.” [A 2016] study, authored by David Broockman at Stanford University and Joshua Kalla at … Read more
News and social media outlets have been reporting numerous incidents of racism, hate crimes, and racially-charged harassment since the Tuesday election outcome. According to USA Today, “There indeed has been a spike in the number of reports of such incidents, say representatives for two organizations that track such occurrences. A representative for one group, in … Read more
Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that “[o]ne of the strongest predictors of Trump support is the proportion of the population that is native-born. Relatively few people in the places where Trump is strong are immigrants — and, as their answers on their ancestry reveal, they very much wear Americanness on their sleeve.” … Read more
Recent research finds that the way people perceived the economic outcomes of immigration influenced whether or not they voted “Leave” in the Brexit referendum: The pattern of voting in the referendum reflects differences in the share of the over-65 group and the less educated across regions (with these two groups more likely to vote for Brexit). … Read more
World Bank economist Harun Onder has a post over at the Brookings Institution on his brand new study on rising nationalism and older generations: Much ink has been spilled against such premises of rising nationalism. But a curious observation remains to be explained: Why do nationalist arguments tend to resonate with old people? Take the … Read more
“Is Poland’s government right-wing or left-wing?” asks a recent article in The Economist. Its leaders revere the Catholic church, vow to protect Poles from terrorism by not accepting any Muslim refugees and fulminate against “gender ideology” (by which they mean the notion that men can become women or marry other men). Yet the ruling Law and … Read more
I’ve mentioned the populist trade problem before. GMU economist Bryan Caplan has published on the irrationality of voters, demonstrating that voters tend to suffer from biases that disagree with the findings of actual economists. Given our current political climate, consider what he calls “anti-foreign bias”: Harvard’s Greg Mankiw writes in The New York Times, Voters clearly … Read more