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In
the Dark: What are the incentives to turn on the lights?
(10/13/03) |
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Electrical outages—no big
deal. At least, they weren't a big deal until August 14,
2003. That night for millions of Americans and Canadians
the power went off and they were without lights and air
conditioning. Outages disrupted the activities of citizens,
businesses and governments alike.
In the aftermath of this massive outage why aren't
private businesses jumping in to fix the problems?
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Attacking
Big Mac (5/5/2003) |
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While the hot
item on the Congressional menu is President Bush's economic
stimulus proposal, others continue to simmer on the back
burner. Believe it or not, one of those items is fast
food. As the annual post-holiday, pre-spring break diet
season gets into full swing, we're likely to hear more
about what the Surgeon General's report called a national
"epidemic of obesity." Last fall, Sen. Bill
Frist (R-TN) and Sen. Jeff Bingaman, (D-N.M.), introduced
legislation for programs to reduce Americans slim down.
President Bush recently suggested that a nation of couch
potatoes could best fight fat with 30 minutes of activity
daily, but some plaintiffs and lawyers place the blame
at the other end of the fork. A Big Mac attack is no laughing
matter, they argue; and now they're attacking back. |
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How
Should We Reach for the Stars? (2/28/2003) |
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The break-up
of the space shuttle, Columbia, on February 1st has sharpened
political and scientific debate over NASA's mission and
funding. The on-going disagreement, rarely more than an
undercurrent that gets less attention than it may deserve,
tends to surface in the media whenever NASA stumbles.
While much attention, certainly, will be focused on whether
there was enough money allocated and enough care taken
to ensure the safety of the astronauts, in economic terms,
the most fundamental question the nation should ask itself
is whether non-defense space exploration and research
truly is a public good. Economic reasoning asserts that
the answer to that question determines whether government
or the private sector should pay the bill for ventures
to the final frontier. |
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The
Dividend Debate (1/28/2003) |
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A key feature
of the Bush economic stimulus plan is the elimination
of double taxation of dividends. The IRS gets a double
dip because dividends are actually income to two different
"people." The word "people" is in
quotes here because it's hard to think of corporations
as persons, but in the legal sense that's exactly what
they are. |
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The
Debate Over Airport Security—A National Exercise
in Cost/Benefit Analysis 9/24/2002) |
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How much security
is the right amount? A glib economist would dismiss the
question as an easy one: We should add security as
long as the additional benefit of the increase in security
is greater than the additional cost. A thoughtful
economist knows that, as the saying goes, "the devil
is in the details." Measuring the value and calculating
the cost of each additional increment of security is a
daunting task, with a multitude of dimensions - from the
financial viability of airlines, to the accessibility
of air travel for individuals, to the level of unrest
and anxiety in our society. Nonetheless, it's a task we
must undertake if we are to reach a national consensus
on just how much security we want and how much restriction
of freedom we are willing to tolerate. |
