More FITs links

Including links to two essays from the prolific Joel Kotkin. Also,

John Cochrane interviews Casey Mulligan about the massive budget reconciliation bill (Mulligan actually knows what’s in it). It sounds like it was written by Wesley Mouch. I say that in practice government policies subsidize demand and restrict supply. So the bill will subsidize day care and insist that day care be unionized. If you think that the total spending in the bill is what is wrong with it, you are wrong. If the bill did not increase spending by a dime but all of its disincentives to work and invest were imposed, it would be an economic disaster.

Have a nice day.

7 thoughts on “More FITs links

  1. So he thinks subsidized/unionized daycare is a disincentive to work? Not sire how this follows.

    • unionization restricts supply, so less daycare, so fewer women in the labor force. just like housing subsidies combined with zoning restrictions does not lead to more housing

    • at ~16:30, Mulligan notes that the child care credit does not include a work requirement. While that may seem counterintuitive, it does not if you think of it as a stealth welfare payment

  2. “ neither side of the class war is covering itself in glory. The less-educated are rejecting vaccines, which seem to have significant benefits and little or no risk. The elites remain enamored of lockdowns, mask mandates, and remote classrooms, which have no proven benefit and, at least in the case of lockdowns and remote classrooms, high costs.”

    Exactly. This is a frequent topic around our dinner table. We feel like we are surrounded by crazy folks on both sides. But, if forced to choose, we are sticking with the red folks over the blue folks. Hope you’re having a good day too!

    • Can we just break up already? “It’s not you, it’s me” and just move on from there.

      ***

      The notion of a national breakup has long simmered as a fringe argument, but it is increasingly popular in certain precincts of the political right and has gained at least some traction with partisans of both sides. A recent survey by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia found that about 50 percent of Donald Trump voters and 40 percent of Joe Biden voters agreed to some extent with the proposition that the country should split up, with either red or blue states seceding.

      https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/06/americans-national-divorse-theyre-wrong-515443

  3. Seeing the name Wesley Mouch and the name Mulligan in the same paragraph makes me wonder when Robert Stadler’s name is going to Rearden is head.

  4. One of the only reasons we would send our children to our daycare is that they don’t make them wear masks. All of the county daycares make the kids wear masks. I assume if daycares were unionized they would make them wear masks.

    Unionization is the death of independent decision making. If they have such daycare away for free it wouldn’t be worth that to me.

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