The New Ideas Blog

Most people prefer simple ideas. Even geniuses like Albert Einstein like to keep it simple when possible. But Einstein understood that we can oversimplify things. He said “Simplify as much as is possible, but no more!” That last part is crucial, which gets us to today’s topic, the idea that SUVs are somehow bad because they use a lot of gas. It’s a gross over-simplification.

Does an SUV driver use more gas than someone driving a smaller more fuel-efficient car? That depends on how (more…)

When talking about financial freedom, different people can mean entirely different things. For some it means getting to do what they want because they have enough money. For others it means having enough income from investments that they are free of any financial concerns.

Of course, few people are actually unconcerned about financial matters regardless of how much income they have. Some even get more worried about their finances as they get wealthier. And few people get to (more…)

People have money trouble for different reasons. On the other hand, there are some mistakes and bad financial habits that are common in these situations. This explains why some people have these problems with money over and over. See if any of the following apply to you.

1. Not wanting to think about money.

If you didn’t pay attention or think about where you were going when driving you would probably get lost and have accidents more often. The same is true of money. Many people (more…)

Things are often not as reasonable as they appear to be when it comes to government regulation. They also are often not what they appear to be. With that in mind, here’s a different perspective on mandated auto insurance.

First we start with the obvious - at least what is obvious to those who understand what happens at the intersection of politics and business. It is that the big push for states to mandate insurance came from… wait, it’s coming… insurance companies! Surprised? Not in the least? No, it should be at all surprising that large companies want to use governments to force people to buy (more…)

Forbes magazine recently did a profile of Victor Li from the the University of Michigan, and his newest innovation; flexible self-healing concrete. Great idea (and you should see the photo of the concrete bending without breaking). But that is not exactly what this post is about. Instead I want to look at another idea that occurred to me as I read the article. It is that we often create things without regard to the future costs they will impose on us or others.

In fact, after neglecting the massive highway system we have built in this country for decades, it would now cost well over two trillion dollars to catch up on maintenance and (more…)

I used to argue against government welfare programs on moral grounds. My reasoning? Here’s the short version: If you don’t have the right to take my money to pay your bills, you don’t gain that right by having a government do it for you. Now I tend to favor limited welfare because survival is a higher value than my right to keep all of my money. But there’s another reason to be critical of welfare programs: They don’t work very well. Welfare that works should not just feed people, but help them to feed themselves.

I come from a background that not only included a very low income for years, but also included (more…)

Of course there are opportunities during a recession, including those listed below. In fact, many “lucky people” will prosper in these tough economic times. If you want to be one of them, you have to start to think like them.

To begin with, you might want to turn off the stream of bad news on the television. You get the picture, and there isn’t actually that much “usable” information that you can get from these sources. Believe me, you’ll hear about (more…)

You may recall my recent post titled, “Public Lies,” which took a look at the fallacy of licensing as a necessary function of government. The advantages of licensing clearly are on the side of the industry licensed, not the public. This is why businesses band together to call for such regulation. While looking into this further I found some more statistics and stories that are very interesting.

As union membership has fallen over the years, licensing has become the method of choice for those seeking government force to protect them from competition. 43 million U.S. workers are now in licensed professions. In 1981 there were less than 100 occupations in the United States that were licensed (a recent article in Forbes Magazine estimated the number at 80). Now there are 1,100 occupations for which a license is needed. Contrary to what some might think, there has been no (more…)

The very concept of retirement is flawed. It is based on several false premises. First is the premise that at a certain age you are no longer able to provide economic value. That is clearly nonsense as shown by the many millionaire entrepreneurs and business people in the sixties, seventies and eighties. Yes, we generally get weaker and lose some abilities as we age. But there are seventy-five year-old retirees playing tennis out there, and anyone who can still think and move two fingers can do what I’m doing for a living.

Another false premise is (more…)

The role of prices is one of the least understood yet most important concepts in economics. Today I’ll explain that a little bit, but there is a lot more to say on the subject.

Suppose a country grows sugar cane, yet starts to buy imported sugar from halfway around the world, thus destroying its own industry? Why would they do this? Because the information represented by prices has been distorted. What I mean is that prices give us the information as to what to do. If local sugar is priced at 60 cents-per-pound and sugar from the United States at 50 cents, it makes sense to buy the latter. But perhaps the real price of U.S. sugar would be 70 cents if it weren’t for the subsidies and special tax breaks the government gives to the industry. That is how you pervert the (more…)