March 20, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

Notable from this opinion:

Price controls never work because they deny economic participants the necessary information to properly allocate scarce resources and motivate people to produce needed goods and services. The Roman Emperor Diocletian (fourth century B.C.) tried price controls with food grains, and they, of course, failed. President Nixon tried them, and economists now agree they laid the groundwork for the post-1973 decline in U.S. production workers’ real wages. 

President Jimmy Carter tried them, and the results were billions of wasted hours of people waiting in gas lines. Most recently, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has imposed them on food prices, including chickens. The result, as you would expect, is a chicken shortage. 

But here we go again. Reps. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat, and Chris Cannon, Utah Republican, have just introduced a bill to have government officials set the prices credit card companies charge banks and ultimately merchants for “interchange fees.” The many credit card companies, their bank clients and the millions of merchants who accept the cards have freely negotiated fees for decades, much as businesses negotiate prices with each other for goods and services.

Consider reading it all.

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March 20, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

See the original 1913 IRS individual income tax forms (4 pages total, including all forms instructions).

(HT: Mark Perry)

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March 20, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

From the Cleveland Fed. Click to see full size.

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March 20, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

Most republicans think the US health care system is the best in the world; democrats disagree. Read the article here.

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March 20, 2008 by Tom Armstrong.

This is the final video installment on the Laffer Curve.

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