Editor note: Milton Friedman would be 98 this Saturday July 31. (He died on November 16, 2006.) This exchange with Robert Bradley–when Dr. Friedman was 91 years old–is testament to the mental powers of one of the greatest social thinkers of modern time.
Friedman had not met Bradley but was in the habit of actively communicating with scholars until his final illness.
I had heard that the great economist and social thinker Milton Friedman (1912–2006) was a prolific communicator with those who posed worthy questions to him. So when I got interested in mineral resource theory, which would culminate with my 2007 essay, Resourceship: An Austrian Theory of Mineral Resources, I asked Dr. Friedman in August 2003 about his views on the late Julian Simon (1932–98), specifically whether Simon’s work on resources, and his conception of the ultimate resource, merited a Nobel Prize in economics.…
New Mexico has enjoyed some of the lowest energy prices in the country—which is good as it is a poor state. However, the major supplier of electricity to the state, PNM, has just asked for a 21.2% rate increase on top of the 24% they’ve received over the last few years. Welcome to the new world of government-forced renewable energy–and one reason why Senator Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recently said he didn’t have the votes for a federal renewable portfolio standard (RPS).
The anticipated rate shock gets worse for New Mexicans: a nearly 50% rate hike in five years. While PNM claims New Mexico still has some of the lowest rates in the country, the citizens are not taking the preventable increase lying down. David King, chairman of the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission (PRC), for example, calls the rate increase a “hot potato” saying that he’s received “a flood of calls from ratepayers.”…
[Editor note: The summary and analysis below is reprinted with the permission of the Institute for Energy Research. The sections past the summary are authored by Dr. Andrew Chamberlin. Cap-and-trade remains alive unless the U.S. Senate fails to pass legislation to go to conference with HR 2454, The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.)
To better understand the broad consequences of the proposed Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act on the U.S. economy, the Institute for Energy Research commissioned Chamberlain Economics, L.L.C to perform an economic and distributional analysis of cap-and-trade portion of the proposal.
The report examines the impacts that the American Power Act would have on the U.S. economy, the method by which emission allowances are distributed to corporations and the distributional cost of the bill on households by income, age group, region and family type.…