Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Recommended reading

Lots of stuff to get through:
  • very interesting article describes how bananas are brought from Latin America to the shelves of your local grocery store, where they can then be purchased for around 20 cents a pop. Just another everyday miracle of capitalism.
  • Remember kids, regulation encouraged people to load up on sovereign debt from the very European countries that are now in crisis.
  • Scott Sumner has a must-read post on unemployment insurance (note the parts about France and Denmark) and here's a good companion read on labor market reform in Germany.
  • Arnold Kling nails it on political incentives. It cannot bear repeating enough: politics is a sick, twisted process with a horrible incentive structure (anyone who doubts should just watch the race for the Republican nomination). The amount of our lives that should be dictated by politics should be kept to an absolute minimum. 
  • Energy: Charles K. Ebinger, a self-described Democrat and scholar at the Brookings Institution says his party is out to lunch on energy policy (a term I despise as there shouldn't be an energy policy), the Oregon state government plumbs new depths of economic stupidity, and former Microsoft chief strategist Nathan Myhrvold explains why government subsidies for green energy make little sense.
Many of these links were originally found at Hit and Run, Carpe Diem and Taxing Tennessee -- all consistently excellent reads. 

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