More on Ban the Penny

I have been urging the Cdn gubmnt to stop minting pennies for a long time. When former student, Scoop, saw this, he quickly penned the following press release:

UWO prof supports campaign to scrap the penny
31 March 2008

University of Western Ontario Economics Professor John Palmer today threw his support behind Winnipeg MP Pat Martin’s Private Member’s Bill to scrap the penny.

“We need to scrap the penny – it doesn’t even have value as scrap metal. The simple fact is that prices and incomes are somewhere between 20 and 100 times what they were a century ago, and there is no reason to keep meaningless little coins like the penny and even the nickel around — they won’t buy much, if anything, anyway,” Palmer said. “With so few of them used in transactions, and a copper and zinc mines’ worth of pennies sitting stagnant in jars, it’s time to relegate the penny to its proper place – the history books next to half-penny and the farthing. With the reality of today’s economy, the dime is the new penny.”

Palmer has been campaigning to get rid of the penny for over two decades. If the penny and the nickel were scrapped, he said it would be easy enough to round prices to the nearest decimal point – or dime.

“The minting of pennies and nickels takes up valuable resources – and mining and smelting of the metals, not to mention the greenhouse gas emissions generated creating and transporting these useless coins, are a burden on the environment,” Palmer said. “I am pleased MP Martin has joined the ban the penny campaign – and I hope that all Canadian MPs will see the wisdom of his useful bill to scrap a useless coin.”

The Toronto Blue Jays

My prediction, which will probably lose me several friends, is that the Trono (pronounced Trah-nah) Blue Jays will win 79 games this season. Here’s hoping that’s just pessimism on my part.

The Toronto Blue Jays

My prediction, which will probably lose me several friends, is that the Trono (pronounced Trah-nah) Blue Jays will win 79 games this season. Here’s hoping that’s just pessimism on my part.

Tyr – the God of Anti-Economists

Harry Truman is reputed to have once said,

Somebody bring me a one-handed economist! I’m tired of hearing, “On the one hand this, on the other hand that…”

Tyr was a one-handed Norse god,

The t-rune … is named after Tyr, and was identified with this god., the reconstructed Proto-Germanic name is Tîwaz. The rune is sometimes also referred to as Teiwaz, or spelling variants.

Judging from the rune portrayed in Wikipedia, one wonders if that’s all Tyr was missing:

Virgins, Suicide Bombers

You know those virgins allegedly waiting for the suicide bombers? Here they are in a Google video.

Islamic Terrorists in Canada

From the Trono Star (h/t to BenS):

Person 3: “What happens, what happens at the Parliament?”
Person 1: “We go and kill everybody.”
Person 3: “And then what?”
Informant: “And then read about it …”
Person 1: “We get victory.”
Informant: “And take, uh, Paul, um, what’s his name ____. Paul loser.”
Person 1: “Paul Martin.”
Person 3: “Yeah.”
Person 1: “Nah, I wish he had won guy.”
Informant: “What you . . . what you talkin’ about?”
Person 1: “Now it’s the other guy, Harper.”

Islamic Terrorists in Canada

From the Trono Star (h/t to BenS):

Person 3: “What happens, what happens at the Parliament?”
Person 1: “We go and kill everybody.”
Person 3: “And then what?”
Informant: “And then read about it …”
Person 1: “We get victory.”
Informant: “And take, uh, Paul, um, what’s his name ____. Paul loser.”
Person 1: “Paul Martin.”
Person 3: “Yeah.”
Person 1: “Nah, I wish he had won guy.”
Informant: “What you . . . what you talkin’ about?”
Person 1: “Now it’s the other guy, Harper.”

Externalities: An Overview

BenS recently asked me about the term “externalities”. Here is my reply:

Externalities are the effects imposed on others but not taken into account by the person engaging in some action. The best examples are (1) pollution, a negative externality and (2) personal flower gardens at the front of a house, a positive externality.



In the case of negative externalities, people do too much of whatever it is because they don’t consider all the costs they are inflicting on others. In the case of positive externalities, people do too little of whatever it is because they don’t consider all the benefits conferred upon others.



A standard policy prescription is to tax activities that generate negative externalities (hence the support by many economists for raising gasoline taxes even higher) and to subsidize activities that generate positive externalities.



Some (many?) people refer to externalities as “market failures”, which they are, relative to some idealized and impossible norm. These same people then illogically conclude that “therefore” it follows the gubmnt should intervene in the marketplace (a la the tax/subsidy schemes or other options). Of course such illogic fails to consider the flipside of the problem: gubmnt failure, wherein politicians and bureaucrats create more inefficiencies than they solve.



Applying these prescriptions to ethanol would mean we’d tax the snot out of that junk.



If (a very big if) CO2 emissions cause global warming, then taxing carbon-based fuels might be an appropriate solution. But this type of tax/subsidy scheme might be less efficient than just building dikes and levies. I.e., the tax/subsidy solutions which are standard (first suggested by Pigou, and hence called Pigou or Pigouvian taxes) are not always the best option because they don’t consider other possibilities. Ronald Coase first pointed this out in a famous article in 1960, but it was so obtuse that many people have struggled to grasp this point.

Externalities: An Overview

BenS recently asked me about the term “externalities”. Here is my reply:

Externalities are the effects imposed on others but not taken into account by the person engaging in some action. The best examples are (1) pollution, a negative externality and (2) personal flower gardens at the front of a house, a positive externality.



In the case of negative externalities, people do too much of whatever it is because they don’t consider all the costs they are inflicting on others. In the case of positive externalities, people do too little of whatever it is because they don’t consider all the benefits conferred upon others.



A standard policy prescription is to tax activities that generate negative externalities (hence the support by many economists for raising gasoline taxes even higher) and to subsidize activities that generate positive externalities.



Some (many?) people refer to externalities as “market failures”, which they are, relative to some idealized and impossible norm. These same people then illogically conclude that “therefore” it follows the gubmnt should intervene in the marketplace (a la the tax/subsidy schemes or other options). Of course such illogic fails to consider the flipside of the problem: gubmnt failure, wherein politicians and bureaucrats create more inefficiencies than they solve.



Applying these prescriptions to ethanol would mean we’d tax the snot out of that junk.



If (a very big if) CO2 emissions cause global warming, then taxing carbon-based fuels might be an appropriate solution. But this type of tax/subsidy scheme might be less efficient than just building dikes and levies. I.e., the tax/subsidy solutions which are standard (first suggested by Pigou, and hence called Pigou or Pigouvian taxes) are not always the best option because they don’t consider other possibilities. Ronald Coase first pointed this out in a famous article in 1960, but it was so obtuse that many people have struggled to grasp this point.

Fitna, the Movie

Geert Wilders’ film Fitna, a critical examination of Islamism and the Quran, is now available on the internet (e.g. see here). For reviews, see this by Eugene Volokh or this from Reuters.

Update: For more, see this, especially see the statment from LiveLeak, which is hosting the video, and see Update III:

I just watched Geert Wilders’ film, Fitna, The Movie. My initial reaction is a yawn. No surprise, of course. …

Anyone who has seen terrorist propaganda films is familiar with most of the scenes and most of the disgusting conflations of the Quran with acts of violence, murder, kidnapping and anti-semitism. Such behavior has been condemned resoundingly among Muslims. Those that use the Quran for illegitimate and criminal ends should be punished by the fullest extent of the law.

What I’m really wondering: is Wilders’ protesting against Islam or the monopoly extremists already have over grainy, low-budget, youtube videos? The only difference I see is that Wilders plays the best of Western classical music — an insult to the legacy of Tchaikovsky — than death chants.