Monthly Archives: February 2014

Profile of Ragnar Frisch

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Co-winner of the first Nobel Prize in economics. The profile, by Arild Sæther and Ib E. Eriksen, is devastating. Frisch became an ardent supporter of central planning. The authors quote him writing

The blinkers will fall once and for all at the end of the 1960s (perhaps before). At this time the Soviets will have surpassed the US in industrial production. But then it will be too late for the West to see the truth. (Frisch 1961a)

To me, the moral of the story is that you can be very confident, highly respected, and completely wrong.

Government and Scale

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Don Boudreaux writes,

– the number of citizens per each of the 50 states in the U.S. is today, on average, 6,300,000 (or more than 27 time larger than in 1789);

– the average number of citizens represented by each of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives today is about 724,000 – meaning that the typical member of the U.S. House today represents a number of citizens 13 times larger than was represented by his or her counterpart in 1789;

– – the average number of citizens represented by each of the 100 members of the U.S. Senate today is 3,150,000 – meaning that the typical member of the U.S. Senate today represents a number of citizens 23 times larger than was represented by his or her counterpart in 1789.

For a long time, I have made an issue of this. I believe that as government scales up, it gets worse. My recent essay offered international evidence for this. I discuss it in the widely-unread Unchecked and Unbalanced. Michael Lotus and James Bennett in America 3.0 also suggest that a country with more states, each less populous but with more governing autonomy, would be a desirable future. Almost ten years ago, I wrote We Need 250 States.

Eating Out More

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Timothy Taylor finds a USDA report, which says that

Between 1977-78 and 2005-08, U.S. consumption of food prepared away from home increased from 18 to 32 percent of total calories.

Since 1970, the proportion of food spending that is spent on eating out has increased from about 25 percent to about 43 percent.

Taylor and the USDA focus on the consequences for obesity. I would add that this trend will increase measured GDP. When you spend time preparing a meal at home, it does not count as GDP. When you eat out, the time spent preparing the meal does count as GDP.

I believe that this represents a legitimate increase in GDP. My comparative advantage is not in food preparation. The same is true for most people. Spending less time in the kitchen represents economic progress.

Although I eat out much less than most people, I rarely spend more than 20 minutes preparing a meal. That means that I eat a lot of prepared foods. I do think that most meals that you eat at home have a higher ratio of nutrients to calories than most meals that you eat outside the home. Perhaps that will change at some point.