Category Archives: Politics

On the Political Economy of Native Tribes

My latest Mises Canada post is all about Native tribes:

Ludwig von Mises wrote that, “[d]emocratic control is budgetary control. The government has but one source of revenue—taxes. … But if the government has other sources of income it can free itself from this control.”[1] This principle is particularly important for understanding the internal politics of Canadian Native tribes, whose governments are the recipients of large transfers from the Canadian federal government.

A recent scandal involving the Squamish Nation, a Vancouver-area tribe with a population of about 4,000, is a case in point. Two political officials of the band spent $1.5 million from an emergency fund for their personal ends. According to the investigation that eventually exposed them, “it was clear they handed out funds to develop political support from members.” [2] The scandal derives from the fact that funds earmarked for one purpose, emergencies, were used for a different purpose. But the interesting economic story would nonetheless hold if the funds had been used only for their intended purposes.

According to its most recent financial statements,[3] the Squamish Nation earned $11.3 million from Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, i.e. the Canadian Federal Government, and only $8.4 million from taxation in 2014. As Mises suggests in the quote above, a government with alternative sources of income besides taxation can use this income to free itself from democratic control. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is a favourite activity of all governments, but when the robbery occurs through taxation, it is at least limited by Paul’s awareness that he is being robbed.

Go read the rest at Mises Canada.

Migration and Open Borders with Nathan Smith

In this episode, Nathan Smith discusses the economics and history of migration and migration restrictions. Nathan is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration: Finance and Economics at Fresno Pacific University and regular blogger at Open Borders: The Case.

We start the episode by discussing the economic impacts of Nathan’s own migration to Fresno. Students gain, as he adds to the supply of economics professors, other economists might lose from his competition in labour markets, people looking for parking near the University might lose, as he slightly reduces the supply of available parking spaces, and property owners gain from his demand for housing. In general, anyone Nathan transacts with gains from the transaction, while those who he competes with may suffer some slight loss.

The big slogan among open borders advocates is that a significant reduction in migration restrictions could “double world GDP.” Nathan’s own most recent estimates show about a 91% increase world GDP, mainly because people would move from places where they can earn very little (e.g. places with dysfunctional institutions) to places where they can earn quite a bit more (e.g. places with well-functioning  institutions, complementary factors of production, highly developed networks of specialization and exchange, etc.). There are complementarities between human capital and unskilled labour. For instance, great managers are more productive when there are many workers to manage, and the workers are more productive where there are great managers. Continue reading Migration and Open Borders with Nathan Smith

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Virginia Political Economy and Entrepreneurship with Diana Thomas

In this episode, Diana Thomas discusses the relationship between the Virginia School of Political Economy and the Austrian School of Economics. Diana is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Heider College of Business at Creighton University.

The Virginia School is a branch of public choice, the application of the tools and techniques of economics to the study of political actors. The Virginia School’s founders, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, were the first to systematically apply a rational choice framework to the study of politics in The Calculus of Consent.

Two assumptions commonly made by neoclassical economists are the “benevolence assumption” and the “omniscience assumption.” The benevolence assumption is implicit in normative analysis of what governments “ought” to do, as this assumes that political actors are motivated to maximize the common good rather than pursuing their self-interest. This assumption is challenged by public choice economists. The omniscience assumption is at play in economic models that depict the economy as being in equilibrium, whereby nobody is misinformed of or surprised by economic reality. This assumption is challenged by Austrian economists. Continue reading Virginia Political Economy and Entrepreneurship with Diana Thomas

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Radicalism and the Political Landscape

Last night I had a nice conversation with some other Queen’s economics alumni. When the conversation turned to politics, I said that I didn’t want to follow the next election and that I had promised myself I wouldn’t support the lesser evil. I may have come off as apathetic about politics, but that was not my intention.

The way I see it, there is a tradeoff between having a small (i.e. negligible) influence on present politics, by volunteering for political parties, talking (or blogging) about current political issues, and of course voting, and having a potentially larger influence on future politics. Here is the opening paragraph of Hayek’s essay, The Intellectuals and Socialism:

In all democratic countries, in the United States even more than elsewhere, a strong belief prevails that the influence of the intellectuals on politics is negligible. This is no doubt true of the power of intellectuals to make their peculiar opinions of the
moment influence decisions, of the extent to which they can sway the popular vote on questions on which they differ from the current views of the masses. Yet over somewhat longer periods they have probably never exercised so great an influence as they do today in those countries. This power they wield by shaping public opinion.

Hayek’s view, which I share, is that there is a fundamentally different mechanism at play in short-run politics and in long-run politics: The short run turns on popular opinion, while the long run turns on the forces that shape popular opinion. Continue reading Radicalism and the Political Landscape