For most economists, the workings of “price gouging” laws are simple and predictable. Binding price caps in emergencies create shortages on the most urgently needed goods and services during emergencies.

The recommended policy reform is simple, too: stop harming citizens when they can least afford it!

It would seem to be an open-and-shut case, a slam dunk for economics to inform the electorate and thus policymakers to avoid such folly. Remember the gasoline lines and natural gas shortages of the 1970s? Perhaps no simple event has convinced mainstream economists that price controls have bad consequences despite intention.

Defenders of economic liberty have an even easier argument: merchants ought to be free to ask what ever price they like for the goods and services they offer. Price gouging laws unjustly limit that freedom and government ought not to do that.…

“In its heyday the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was a bastion of objectivity. However this show revealed nothing but wind apologetics. The absurdities were thick and one-sided without a single thread of verity.”

Recently the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) pretended to take on the endless debate around the topic most people know little about – the health problems created by industrial wind turbines. The results were quite disappointing.

The Sunday, October 21st program (two segments) skated around the issues like Barbara Ann Scott.

The first segment was a cut and paste “documentary” by a novice reporter from Kincardine, Ontario about people in her “home town.” Frustratingly, and sadly, this entire set up piece merely touched at the edges of the actual concerns many of which have been reported on CBC by actual CBC reporters.…

“No matter how much you pay with a carbon levy, virtually nothing is received climatically…. No matter the level of domestic action that we take, it will pale in comparison to the rapid expansion of carbon dioxide emissions in other parts of the world.”

How much global warming will result from U.S. emissions over the course of this century, and how much of that could be prevented by a carbon tax? These two questions have the same simple answer—virtually none. One or two tenths of a degree a century out with–and without–a carbon tax makes the whole climate debate a peculiar exercise.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that the earth’s average temperature will increase somewhere between 1.1°C and 6.4°C over the 21^st century, depending on the assumed pathway of anthropogenic emissions (both greenhouse gases and aerosols) and the actual (but unknown) climate sensitivity.…

“America can continue paying billions in subsidies annually to finance “green” technologies and agenda-driven science. Or we can generate hundreds of billions a year in royalties and taxes, create millions of jobs, and rejuvenate our economy by applying commonsense regulation to the Big Three consumer-chosen energies–oil, gas, and coal.”

The United States is now Balkanized into five distinct voting blocs, notes Joel Kotkin (two blue, two red, one blue?red). Other political analysts see the nation bifurcating along “makers” and “takers” lines, while still others say 50.6% of the popular vote is hardly a mandate.

In any event, when American voters reelected President Obama, they also returned his wide-ranging agenda at the EPA, Interior, Energy, and Justice departments for “fundamentally transforming” our nation from its limited-government roots. And not in the name of sound science and realistic tradeoffs between market failure and government failure. …