He Asked
4 May 2009
Mr. Mark ________
Proprietor, www.ssotu.com
Melbourne, Australia
Dear Mr. ________:
Opposing free trade, you challenge me to answer the following question:
"You [Boudreaux] are appointed the Chief Terminator of Economic Ignorance at a salary of $150,000 a year. Things are going great for a while, then one day you're told your job will now be done from India for just $10,000 a year. How are you going to feed your family?"
Such a question elicits many complementary answers. Here, for now, is just one - in the form of a question for you: Suppose that people no longer wish to incur the cost of escaping economic ignorance; suppose that people's preferences change - say, people switch from preferring economic education to preferring more chemistry or theology education, subjects about which I know nothing. Demand for my services as an economic educator dries up.
Does the fact that my income falls dramatically as a result of this economic change give me the right to force people to continue to purchase my services? Are people morally obliged, having once voluntarily paid me well to perform a service for them, to continue to pay me well indefinitely, regardless of their own preferences and opportunities? Am I morally entitled to prevent people from spending their money on instruction in chemistry or theology?
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Costs are Still Not Benefits
2 May 2009
Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
To the Editor:
Paul Krugman makes the astonishing claim that "a commitment to greenhouse gas reduction would, in the short-to-medium run, have the same economic effects as a major technological innovation: It would give businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities even in the face of excess capacity" ("An Affordable Salvation," May 1).
Technological innovations benefit society NOT by giving firms "a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities," but rather by reducing costs - not by making resources scarcer (by artificially increasing demands for them) but by making resources go farther in their capacity to satisfy human desires.
If "a reason to invest" were sufficient to restore economic vigor, then war and natural disasters would do the trick even better than would government restrictions on greenhouse-gas emissions.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Keep On Truckin'
1 May 2009
Editor, The Wall Street Journal
200 Liberty Street
New York, NY 10281
To the Editor:
C. T. Sciance doesn't like immigrants competing for jobs in America (Letters, May 1). He tells of his brother "whose job driving trucks in California used to pay $40 per hour and is now done by $15-per-hour illegal immigrants with fake papers and stolen identities." I've some questions.
What's the relevance to Mr. Sciance's economic argument of the immigrants' legal status? Would he not complain if these immigrants were legal?
Second, does Mr. Sciance oppose the development of engines with more horsepower, rigs with improved braking and suspension systems, better highways that permit safer travel at higher speeds, or other technological advances that enable trucking companies today to ship any given amount of freight using fewer and fewer drivers? If not, why not? Why might he oppose one method of reducing shipping costs but not other methods?
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Jumbo Concern
29 April 2009
Editor, Los Angeles Times
Dear Editor:
Explaining the photo-op of his company jet flying low over Manhattan, President Obama said "It was something we found out about along with all of you" ("Obama calls plane's Manhattan photo-op 'a mistake'," April 28).
Who's the "we"? Surely not the royal "we," for no tribune of the people such as Mr. Obama would be so arrogant.
So by "we," Mr. Obama must mean himself and his administration - which raises the obvious question: if he and his aides can't keep track of a jumbo piece of capital equipment assigned to them for their own direct use, why should we trust them to keep track of the $3.6 trillion dollars that they plan to spend in fiscal 2010 through a sprawling bureaucracy? When untold amounts of this money are misspent, as is inevitable, will Mr. Obama find out about it only when we do?
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Cheap Import
28 April 2009
TO: Whoever Is Responsible for www.ssotu.com
FROM: Don Boudreaux
RE: your e-mail, and associated link, sent to me here in the United States asserting that globalization is "de-industrializing" America
I'll ignore the river of factual errors, misleading definitions, and theoretical misunderstandings that saturate your 'analysis.' I content myself merely ask how you - who so ferociously oppose globalization and low-cost foreign suppliers - justify yourself exporting, to America, your (free!) advice and your website (also free!) from your home in Australia?
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Literature of Politics
27 April 2009
Editor, Washington Post
Dear Editor:
No one can doubt the goodness of E.J. Dionne's motives, but his unshakable faith that well-intentioned and intelligent politicians will make America better is adolescent.
The naive confidence that he has in Barack Obama - as revealed in Mr. Dionne's suggestion that the President "is smart enough to fix things" ("Ironies of 'a Devout Non-Ideologue'," April 27) - reminds me of a line from George Eliot's Middlemarch: "You go against rottenness, and there is nothing more thoroughly rotten than making people believe that society can be cured by a political hocus-pocus."*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* George Eliot, Middlemarch (Oxford Library Classics, 1996 [1871]), p. 517.
