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1. Chart of the Day (above) shows for the first time the “college textbook bubble” has started to deflate, or at least stabilize. The CPI for college textbooks has been flat now for three years and was lower in September than any month since July 2016, partly because of the increasing competition from “open educational resources (OER)” that are free or low-cost alternatives to traditional textbooks.
2. Quotation of the Day I is from Patrick Moore co- founder of Greenpeace:
Wind and solar can’t even produce enough energy to manufacture the hardware they are made from. They are a parasite on the larger economy, making a few people wealthy at everyone’s expense. They are wealth-destroying technologies.
3. Quotations of the Day II is from Thomas Sowell:
Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it. Even countries that were once more prosperous than their neighbors have found themselves much poorer than their neighbors after just one generation of socialistic policies.
Exhibit A: In 1959, Venezuela’s GDP per capita was 10% higher than America’s. Today after a generation of failed socialist policies, the small oil-rich basketcase can’t even feed itself.
4. Aldi and Lidl Cut Into U.S. Grocers’ Turf from the Wall Street Journal:
German discount chains Aldi and Lidl are capturing a larger share of U.S. grocery bills and pressuring U.S. retailers to respond. The privately owned foreign companies have increased sales with their simpler stores that offer fewer products at lower prices. In response, U.S. grocers are lowering prices on staples such as milk and eggs and adding more products the discounters aren’t known for, such as fresh foods.
“Our country has been invaded by the German retailers, and they have disrupted the ecosystem quite severely,” said John Ross, president and chief executive of IGA Inc., an association of about 600 U.S. independent grocers. He called it the biggest shift for U.S. grocers since Walmart Inc. entered the food business in 1988.
Economic Lessons: Competition is the consumer’s best friend, competition breeds competence, creative destruction is pro-consumer, and cutthroat competition is the most effective form of pro-consumer regulation.
5. Target accidentally proves the case against the $15 minimum wage writes Brad Polumbo in the Washington Examiner:
New reporting from CNN Business reveals that many of the Target employees who were supposed to benefit from the [gradual] minimum wage increase [to $15 an hour by the end of next year] have actually suffered from reduced hours and increased automation. This is, of course, what conservative critics of the #Fightfor15 have often predicted — and in line with basic economic theory, to boot.
MP: Really too bad there’s no academic discipline that has studied labor markets and government price controls for hundreds of years that could have predicted that unfortunate outcome.
6. Cartoon of the Day (above) from Patrick Cross.
7. Inconvenient (Fireable) Fact I: The latest estimate for the growing global polar bear abundance is 39,000 (26,000-58,000), a 4-6 fold increase over the 10,000 or so bears that existed in the 1960s, according to zoologist and world-renowned expert Dr. Susan Crockford. But unfortunately Dr. Crockford just lost her position at the University of Victoria for telling school kids politically incorrect, but factually correct information about the growing “polar bear abundance,” see reports here and here.
8. Inconvenient Fact II: Even if all 4.5 billion flights (by number of passengers) this year were stopped from taking off, and the same happened every year until 2100, temperatures would be reduced by just 0.054 degrees, using mainstream climate models — equivalent to delaying climate change by less than one year by 2100, via Bjorn Lomborg.
9. Why Not Try Free Market Health Care? That’s the only approach that actually works, writes John Goodman:
Show me a health care sector where there is no Medicare, no Blue Cross and no employer and I bet that’s a market that works very well. Lasik surgery is one example. Patients get a package price and they know what they are going to pay in advance. There are no “surprise medical bills,” and there is price and quality competition here – unlike other health care markets. Competition works. Over the past decade, the real price of Lasik surgery fell 25%, despite a huge increase in the number of procedures and all manner of technological change – the type of change we are told leads to cost increases everywhere else in medicine. A similar story can be told about cosmetic surgery – another sector where the third-party payers have no role to play.
10. Video of the Day (below) features John Stossel on “Male Brain vs. Female Brain“:
Here’s my latest assortment of interesting economic links, quotations, charts, videos, inconvenient facts and more.
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