Emergent Law
14 June 2009
Editor, Baltimore Sun
Dear Editor:
Diana Schaub rightly argues that no judge should allow empathy for parties in a courtroom to dilute his or her commitment to apply the law dispassionately ("Why empathy is the enemy of justice," June 14). But the need for judicial impartiality does not imply that judges should avoid engaging with the real-world contexts and details that surround every legal dispute.
In a free society, law isn't simply a set of explicit commands handed down from a sovereign (be it a monarch or a democratically elected legislature). A great deal of law - indeed, MOST law - emerges undesigned from the daily practices of ordinary people interacting with, and sometimes bumping into, each other. People on their own often find ways to minimize these conflicts, and these ways become embedded in people's expectations. These expectations, in turn, become unwritten law - law that good judges find and enforce impartially.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University—
Lucky Numbers
13 June 2009
News Editor, WTOP Radio
Washington, DC
Dear Editor:
Interviewing a guest this morning, anchor Nathan Roberts suggested that California's fiscal problems would have been avoided had Proposition 13, enacted in 1978, not "tied the hands of local governments to raise revenue by taxing property values."
Not so. In 1980-81 (the earliest date for which consistent data are available), property-tax revenues in California were (in 2009 dollars) $16.86 billion. In 2006-07 these revenues were $45.47 billion (again in 2009 dollars). This fact means that inflation-adjusted property-tax revenues were, in 2007, higher than they were in 1981 by 170 percent. Over these same years, California's population increased by 58 percent.*
Whatever the causes of California's current fiscal fiasco, a lack of adequate property-tax revenues isn't one of them.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* http://weblog.signonsandiego.com/weblogs/afb/archives/034048.html
Unfairly Unbalanced
12 June 2009
Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
To the Editor:
Paul Krugman is angry that media such as Fox News and the Washington Times often make unsubstantiated, over-the-top claims about Democrats and left-liberal causes ("The Big Hate," June 12).
Prof. Krugman should chill. These media - no less than the likes of CBS and your own paper - are in business not to inform but to entertain. And presumably the fictions that so irritate Mr. Krugman entertain their intended audiences - entertain these audiences no less than do the fictions that are routinely emitted by 'progressive' media entertain THEIR intended audiences.
How else, for example, to explain the routine accusation that members of the Chicago school of economics applauded Pinochet's tyranny in Chile? Or the incessant refrain, from outlets such as The Nation, that multinational corporations (and many economists) seek to 'impose' free trade as a means of enslaving workers? Or the common assertion that persons who endorse free markets are really just mean-spirited mercenaries paid in some coin to protect the privileges of the rich with cynical arguments that confuse and confound ordinary folk?
Aren't these arguments just as incendiary and unsubstantiated as are those that Mr. Krugman attacks?
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Bad Medicine
10 June 2009
Editor, The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
To the Editor:
Geoff Berg blames the high price of medical care on fee-for-service: "The problem with fee-for-service is not merely that it pays providers to provide service; it pays them to create service as well" (Letters, June 10).
This explanation cannot be correct. If it were, we would see, say, the prices of consumer electronics rising ever higher as consumers mindlessly purchase each new gadget marketed by the likes of Sony, Apple, and Dell. These producers, after all, are paid according to the quantities and qualities they supply, and they have incentives to keep creating new gadgets. And yet, the real prices of consumer electronics - as well as of many of the other products supplied according to fee-for-service (which is the vast majority of the economy) - continue to fall.
A better explanation for the high and rising price of medical care is found in Americans' heavy reliance on tax-subsidized third-party payments.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Our Natural Propensity to Truck and Barter
9 June 2009
Editor, Baltimore Sun
Dear Editor:
Bravo for British ambassador Nigel Sheinwald's case for freer trade ("The peril of protectionism," June 9).
One clarification, though: he says that "our globalized economy has not come about by accident. It is the result of our collective choice for openness." If Mr. Sheinwald is referring to multilateral trade agreements such as the GATT, he's correct as matter of history, but he should also point out that any country would gain from free trade even if it tears down its customs walls unilaterally.
If instead Mr. Sheinwald is referring to each government's choice to move toward freer trade, his words unintentionally mislead. What requires government action - what requires "collective choice" - is protectionism. Free trade exists naturally. Free trade is simply the absence of trade restrictions - the absence of officious interference into the affairs of those engaged in consensual capitalist acts.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
Powerful Poetry
8 June 2009
Editor, New York Post
Dear Editor:
George Will is understandably frightened by the administration's and Congress's massive infusion of politics into the operation of the U.S. auto industry - and he is understandably angered by these politicians' blatant lies about how they wish to keep politics out of the operation of this industry ("G.M.: That's 'Gov't Mandate' to you," June 8). Unfortunately, the "leaders" of this industry invited this cancerous intrusion by seeking handouts.
How sad it is that America has too few persons who really, deeply agree with the poet Shelley that
"The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate’er it touches."*
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
* Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Queen Mab" (1813).
Spitzer and the Service Sector
8 June 2009
Editor, Slate
Dear Editor:
Eliot Spitzer laments the continuing dominance of the service sector in the American economy (“Green Shoots, Red Ink, Black Hole,” June 3). Curious that. One would think that, of all people, the former governor would be a huge fan of the service sector.
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Chairman, Department of Economics
George Mason University
