Mankiw on Healthcare

There is an inevitable trade off between people's conceptions of fairness and inequality:

"Inequality in economic resources is a natural but not altogether attractive feature of a free society. As health care becomes an ever larger share of the economy, we will have no choice but to struggle with the questions of how far we should allow such inequality to extend and what restrictions on our liberty we should endure in the name of fairness."

Factchecking Obama on Healthcare

Scott Harrington in the Wall Street Journal.

Really Stupid Tariff

The consensus amongst economists is that this tire tariff is really not a good idea. Here's one good explanation made by Brad Delong:

"Let's see... 250 million cars in America... need 4 tires per car... need new tires every 2.5 years. 400 million tires a year... $1.4 billion dollars a year... 10,000 worker jobs saved... $140,000 dollars per worker-job per year.

Looks like we could (a) let the Chinese sell us tires, (b) tax each tire by $2.50, (c) pay each tire worker who loses his or her job $100K a year, and we come out ahead: American households have more money to spend on other things, China has more jobs to help what is still a very poor country grow, and tire workers have higher incomes and more leisure as well.

But, you say, it would be stupid to impose a $2 a tire tax and use the money to pay each laid-off tire worker $100K a year.

That's the point: when the policy you are adopting is worse for everybody than a policy you agree is stupid, the policy you are adopting is best characterized as really stupid."

HT: Art Carden, Will Wilkinson

Update: Other articles on the issue are here, here, here, and here.

The Right to Life Begins at 22 Weeks of Gestation in the UK

A mother gives her story of how the doctors refused her premature baby medical attention. Why? He came two weeks too early.

(HT: Art Carden)