Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science (Fully Revised and Updated)

average cost of bringing a new drug to market is somewhere in the area of $600 million.

Consumers lose in two ways. First, their tax money is squandered when projects that never should have been funded in the first place go bust (or when the whole banking system needs to be bailed out because it is full of rotten, politically motivated loans). Second, the economy does not develop as quickly or efficiently as it might because credit (a

the Laffer curve, which provided the intellectual underpinnings for the large Reagan-era tax cuts.

Good government makes a market economy possible. Period. And bad government, or no government, dashes capitalism against the rocks, which is one reason that billions of people live in dire poverty around the globe.

This idea has profound implications when it comes to something like organ donation. Spain, France, Norway, Israel, and many other countries have “opt-out” (or presumed consent) laws when it comes to organ donation. You are an organ donor unless you indicate otherwise, which you are free to do. (In contrast, the United States has an “opt-in” system,

By one calculation, if no new cases were filed in India, it would still take 324 years to clear all the existing cases from the docket.

Per capita income in the United States is higher than per capita income in France; the United States also has a higher proportion of children living in poverty.

In the years of communism, there were roughly two abortions for every single live birth. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Western contraceptives have become widely available and the abortion rate has fallen by half.

In short, government is like a surgeon’s scalpel: It is an intrusive tool that can be used for good or for ill. Wielded carefully and judiciously, it will facilitate the body’s remarkable ability to heal itself. In the wrong hands, or wielded overzealously with even the best of intentions, it can cause great harm.