We’ve heard these words so many times: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. The idea of happiness plays a central role in our personal and public lives. But what does it mean? And what does it mean to have a right to it? And should we have such a right? Questions like these are what you get when EconTalk host Russ Roberts welcomes philosopher Daniel Haybron to the show to talk about his new book, Happiness: A Very Short Introduction. In this episode, Roberts and Haybron attempt to unpack this “suitcase word.” We hope you’ll spend some more time thinking about this conversation with us. Use the prompts below to spark new thoughts, or better yet- a new conversation. As always, we love to hear from you.     1- Consider Haybron’s views on happiness survey research. To what extent it is possible to measure happiness? In doing so, should we focus on the (lack of) negatives or on the presence of positives?   2- How should research on happiness be used in the policy world? What does Haybron mean when he says, “The important thing for policy that science can do is just–really, for the public mind and for the culture–is help us change the lens through which we think about how our society is doing and where we want to go?”   3- What’s the difference between being a “consumer” and being an appreciator? Which one are you most often?  How can you make a culture “healthier,” allowing people to focus less on the material? (And again, should we?)   4- What does Haybron mean when he says, “What makes living with each other bearable, and civilization possible, is the willingness of all parties to limit the exercise of their rights.” What’s the appropriate relatonship between legality, morality, and happiness?   5- Roberts shares what he would tell his younger self today. What would you advise YOUR 21 year-old self with regard to the pursuit of happiness?       (0 COMMENTS)

I see three statements repeated by Modern Monetary Theory proponents, almost like mantras: 1. Money is endogenous 2. Banks don’t loan out reserves 3. There is no money multiplier All three of these statements are either false, misleading, or meaningless, depending on how you define terms. 1. Endogeneity: Everyone has their reasons When economists say a variable is endogenous, they mean it is explained by other variables in the model. Endogeneity is not an intrinsic characteristic of a variable, in the way that an apple is red or water contains hydrogen and oxygen atoms. Rather we find it convenient to regard variables as endogenous for the purposes of a certain analysis. Thus one should never say, “You’re wrong; money is endogenous”, rather you might want to claim that, “For the purpose of your analysis, it is more useful to regard money as endogenous.” Monetarists often view the monetary base as being determined exogenously by the central bank, that is, at the bank’s discretion. At the same time, they understand that if the central bank is pegging some other variable, say exchange rates or interest rates, then the central bank has no discretion to adjust the money supply independently. They might still believe that changes in the money supply under that regime are very impactful, but there is no policy discretion for the quantity of base money.  Base money is endogenous. Keynesians often regard the monetary base as being endogenous during a period of interest rate targeting, although with the advent of IOER the central bank can target the base and the interest rate independently. In Singapore, the central bank targets the exchange rate, and regards both interest rates and the monetary base as endogenous. Things change if the central bank stops pegging interest rates at a constant level and instead targets them at a level that is frequently changed. While in that case the base can still be viewed as endogenous for the period when rates are fixed, it’s equally accurate to argue that the central bank adjusts its target interest rate in such a way as to allow desired changes in the base. Thus a central bank intending to do an expansionary monetary policy might cut the interest rate target in order to increase the monetary base. In that sense, they still do have some control over the money supply.  The money supply can be viewed as exogenous over a period of months. All of this nuance is lost in MMT descriptions of monetary policy. Interest rates are viewed as exogenous and the base as endogenous. Any alternative approach is viewed as unthinkable. To an omniscient God, everything in the universe in endogenous. Everyone has their reasons.  Claiming that something is “exogenous” is equivalent to claiming that we don’t fully understand the process by which it is determined. Thus interest rates might look exogenous to one economist, while another sees them as being determined by the central bank’s 2% inflation target. Indeed, the entire “Taylor Rule” literature can be described as an attempt to model interest rates endogenously. 2.  It’s a simultaneous system When a bank makes a loan, it typically gives the borrower a bank account equal to the value of the loan. If the borrower withdraws the money and spends it on a new house, the seller typically takes the funds and deposits them in another bank. That’s the sense in which MMTers argue that banks don’t loan out reserves; the money often stays within the banking system. The exception would be a case where the borrower withdrew the borrowed funds as cash. My problem with the MMT analysis is that it often seems too rigid, with claims that the banking system has no way to get rid of reserves that it does not wish to hold. That’s true of the monetary base as a whole (cash plus reserves), which is determined by the Fed.  But it is not true of bank reserves in isolation. There are two ways for banks to expel undesired excess reserves, a microeconomic approach and a macro approach. The micro approach is to lower the interest rate paid on bank deposits and/or add service charges of various sorts. This encourages the public to hold a larger share of its money as cash and a smaller share as bank deposits. On the other hand, it’s not clear that this process would constitute “lending out reserves”. The macro approach better describes what economists mean by lending out reserves.  Assume the economy is booming and people are borrowing more from banks.  Continue to assume a fixed quantity of base money.   If the borrowed money comes back to banks as increased deposits, then banks can make even more loans and create even more deposits.  Over time, this will increase the aggregate level of both deposits and loans, putting upward pressure on NGDP. In the 106 years after the Fed was created at the end of 1913, the currency stock grew by 516-fold, (not 516%, it’s actually 516 times as large.)  NGDP was up 549-fold.  The currency to GDP ratio does move around over time as tax rates and interest rates change, but clearly the demand for currency is at least somewhat related to the nominal size of the economy.  When NGDP grows, currency demand will usually rise. Thus, in aggregate, a banking system that makes lots more loans will gradually lose reserves as NGDP rises, holding the overall monetary base constant. As is often the case, Paul Krugman expressed this idea more elegantly than I can: When we ask, “Are interest rates determined by the supply and demand of loanable funds, or are they determined by the tradeoff between liquidity and return?”, the correct answer is “Yes” — it’s a simultaneous system. Similarly, if we ask, “Is the volume of bank lending determined by the amount the public chooses to deposit in banks, or is the amount deposited in banks determined by the amount banks choose to lend?”, the answer is once again “Yes”; financial prices adjust to make those choices consistent. Now, think about what happens when the Fed makes an open-market purchase of securities from banks. This unbalances the banks’ portfolio — they’re holding fewer securities and more reserve — and they will proceed to try to rebalance, buying more securities, and in the process will induce the public to hold both more currency and more deposits. That’s all that I mean when I say that the banks lend out the newly created reserves; you may consider this shorthand way of describing the process misleading, but I at least am not confused about the nature of the adjustment. MMTers have a bad habit of assuming that mainstream economists are clueless, just because we use a different framework. 3.  There are a million money multipliers Krugman’s explanation also helps us to understand the confusion over money multipliers.  Injecting more money into the economy sets in motion forces that boost the nominal quantity of just about everything, not just bank loans and bank deposits.  An exogenous and permanent doubling of the monetary base will double the nominal value of every single asset class, from one carat collectable diamonds to Tesla common stock to inventories of soybeans to houses in Orange County to rare stamps. And it will also double the monetary aggregates.  That’s because money is neutral in the long run, so doubling the money supply leaves all real values unchanged in the long run. So the money multiplier for any asset class is merely the nominal stock of that asset dividend by the monetary base.  No serious economist believes the M1 or M2 money multiplier is a constant, and indeed textbooks usually explain it this way: mm = (1 + C/D)/(C/D + ER/D + RR/D) It’s one plus the ratio of cash and bank deposits divided by the cash ratio plus the excess reserve ratio plus the required reserve ratio.  Then economists model the money multiplier by describing the factors that cause these three ratios to change over time.  In my view, the money multiplier model is pretty useless, as I don’t view M1 and M2 aggregates as being important.  Your mileage may vary.  But there’s nothing “wrong” with the model; the question is whether it’s useful or not. The one money multiplier that does matter is NGDP/Base.  Unfortunately, both IOER and the recent zero interest rate episodes have made that multiplier more unstable.  I favor a monetary policy where the NGDP multiplier (aka “velocity”) would be more stable.  No more IOER and fast enough expected NGDP growth to assure positive interest rates. 4.  Beware of “realism” and the fallacy of composition Sometimes you’ll encounter an economist who is very proud that he or she understands how the financial system works in the “real world”.  And obviously that knowledge can be useful for certain purposes.  But the banker’s eye view often misses what’s most important in macroeconomics, the general equilibrium connections that Krugman alluded to in his “simultaneous system” remark. If the Fed gave me a check in exchange for an equal quantity of T-bonds, I’d be no richer than before, no more likely to go out and buy a new car.  And if I took that check and deposited it in a bank, that bank might be no more likely to make a business loan.  They could simply buy a bond, or lend the reserves to another bank.  But as everyone tries to get rid of the base money they don’t want, subtle changes begin to occur in a wide range of asset prices, which will eventually push NGDP higher.  If wages are sticky then the extra NGDP will lead more people to go out and buy cars. Just not me, not the person who first got the new Fed-created money. (1 COMMENTS)

Joe Biden has suggested that as our next president, among his first acts would be to boost the minimum wage level to $15 per hour. In so acting he will be relying on the theory that this law is akin to a price floor. Raise it, and the compensation of all those now standing on it (those now being paid less than this amount, often at the $7.25 level mandated by present federal legislation) will in effect be able to hitch-hike on the increase, and now be paid at the rate of the aforementioned $15. Not that this level of remuneration is anything to write home about, but at least it beats the roughly half that amount, presently proscribed by law. Why do most dismal scientists dismiss this justification as blithering economic illiteracy? This is because, if it were but the case, why stop the elevator at the 15th floor?  Why not raise the minimum wage, instead, to $150 per hour, or $1,500, or $15,000? If this theory were correct, if people could be made wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice by mere legislative enactment, why in bloody blue blazes settle for $15? If this theory were true, the entire case for foreign aid would vanish in smoke. Instead of shipping goods and services and money abroad, all we need to do is advise present recipients to implement a minimum wage law, and keep raising its level until poverty were ended in these countries. Yet no one, not even Bernie Sanders, advocates any such crazy thing. Clearly, this theory is nonsense on stilts. What then is the correct way to look at this matter? It is to see such legislation not as a rising floor, but rather as a hurdle over which a person has to jump in order to be employed in the first place. Why is this? What determines wages? In a word, productivity. LeBron James and Michael Milken earn high wages because they are tremendously productive. Hire one of them, and your revenues shoot through the roof. Middle class people also contribute to the GDP, but at a much more modest level. And the person who asks if you “Want fries with that?” or pushes a broom? He or she also does so, but again less so. Suppose a firm has 100 workers, and shows receipts of $10,000 for a certain time period. They hire the 101st employee, and total revenue rises to $10,010. The company properly attributes this rise to that additional member of the staff. His productivity is thus $10/hour. What will his wage likely be? Well, there are only three possibilities. Either he will earn more than that, say, $12 per hour, exactly that amount, e.g., $10 per hour, or less than that, for example, $4 per hour. We can easily eliminate the first possibility. Any business paying $12 hourly to all their employees who bring in only $10 will face bankruptcy; they will lose $2 every hour, multiplied by their entire staff. But the $4 wage is not sustainable either. The firm will then garner a pure profit of $6 from his labor. Some competitor will offer $4.25; another $4.50 and we will be off to the races. No, the only equilibrium wage rate will be $10. This gives rise to the economic law that compensation tends to equal productivity. Will all those who contribute at that level earn exactly that amount? No, of course not. This theoretical bidding war is not costless. But there is a continual grinding market force that pushes wages in the direction of productivity. The two cannot long remain too far apart. With a minimum wage of $7.25, will this person who can improve your bottom line by $10 get a job? He certainly has a good chance to do so. But what will ensue with a minimum wage of $15? Any firm foolish enough to hire him will now lose $5 per hour. Bankruptcy will ensue for such an employer, and unemployment for the would-be market participant. This legislation does not undergird wages, precluding very low compensation. Productivity, alone, does that. Before the advent of this law in 1938, people were earning compensation in accordance with their contribution to the bottom line. It is no accident that the unemployment rate for teenagers is double that of people in their middle years. The former can undoubtedly jump higher over physical hurdles than the latter, but the reverse is true for economic barriers such as productivity levels. Also, black unemployment due to this law is twice that suffered by whites. Joblessness for black teens is quadruple that of white middle-agers. This has nothing to do with “privilege.” These statistics did not exist before this legislation was passed. Should the minimum wage remain where it is at $7.25? No. Because the exact same analysis applies to those (mainly the mentally handicapped, but some severely physically handicapped), whose hourly productivity is $2, $4 or $6. They are now in effect totally frozen out of the labor market. Why does this law exist given that it is so deleterious for the weakest economic actors? Northerners favor it since it enables them to better compete with lower skilled southerners. Labor unions support minimum wages since they can use it to compete with the unskilled more effectively. Racists want it since it plays havoc in the black community. The “educated” suffer from invincible ignorance on this matter since instead of enrolling in economics 101, they took courses in sociology, history, philosophy, political “science,” et cetera. The minimum wage is a vicious, nasty, depraved law. It negatively impacts the “least, last and lost” amongst us. It ought to be repealed, and salt sowed where once it stood. (0 COMMENTS)

I hope the contents of this post live up to the intellectual pretension of a term like ‘meta-theory’. You be the judge. During the interwar period, John Maynard Keynes wrote three books on money/macro: 1.  A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923) 2. A Treatise on Money (1930) 3. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936) The first book was written in the early 1920s, in the midst of highly unstable price levels in many countries, notably Germany. The second was mostly written at the end of the 1920s, a period of relative stability. The third was written in the midst of the Great Depression, when interest rates were close to zero. A lot happened in that relatively brief 13-year period. Each book clearly reflects the period in which it was written.  The Tract is basically a monetarist book, focusing on how printing lots of money can lead to high inflation.  It covers the Quantity Theory of Money, as well as related concepts such as the inflation tax, purchasing power parity, and the interest parity condition.  These are the issues that economists focus on when inflation is very high and/or unstable. The Treatise is probably best thought of as a sort of “New Keynesian” book.  Not literally—Keynes doesn’t assume rational expectations or develop DSGE models of the economy—rather in spirit.  He suggests that the central bank can and should stabilize the price level (not much different from the NK 2% inflation target.)  He suggests that monetary policy is generally enough, but one could conceive of an extreme case when fiscal actions would be needed.  He talks about forward guidance as an additional policy tool, a promise to hold interest rates low for an extended period.  It’s very moderate book, which seems compatible with the consensus view of monetary policy during the 1990s and early 2000s.  While the Tract also advocated price stability, in the Treatise there is clearly a move away from the quantity theory and toward a focus on interest rates as the instrument of monetary policy. The General Theory is a complex book, and also much more radical.  While monetary policy ideas continue to be covered, the real energy in the book is associated with the more extreme versions of Keynesianism—the paradox of thrift, liquidity traps, favoring fiscal policy over monetary policy, etc.  It represents a move toward ideas associated with post-Keynesianism, or even MMT.  That’s not to say there aren’t mainstream ideas as well; I agree with those who claim that the IS-LM model is pretty clearly envisioned in certain parts of the book. And yet, to suggest that Keynes’s ideas changed with the times is certainly not much of a meta-theory.  But there’s more. Other economists went through similar changes.  Knut Wicksell was a famous exponent of a non-quantity theoretic monetary model, which focused on interest rates as the instrument of central bank policy.  And yet just as with Keynes, Wicksell switched to a quantity theoretic approach during the early 1920s.  And just as with Keynes, many economists favored having the central bank target the price level (or occasionally NGDP) during the latter 1920s.  And just as with Keynes, many economists became skeptical of the efficacy of monetary policy during the 1930s, and switched from a quantity theoretic approach to an income/expenditure approach. OK, so lots of economists shifted with the times.  That’s still not much of a meta-theory.  But there’s more. It all happened again!  By the early 1980s, much of the world had experienced several decades of high and unstable rates of inflation.  Monetarism was riding high. By the early 2000s, the world had experienced a “Great Moderation” and New Keynesianism was riding high. By the early 2010s, many countries were at the zero bound, and various more extreme versions of Keynesianism came back into style, including post-Keynesianism and even MMT.  The paradox of thrift, fiscal stimulus, currency manipulation and other discredited ideas were in vogue. Here I’ll ask readers to put aside whatever you think of any of the ideas, and view the situation from 64,000 feet.  Isn’t it obvious that this state of affairs is deeply embarrassing for the field of macroeconomics?  Doesn’t this provide ammunition for those who claim that economics is “not a science”?  (A debate I believe is basically meaningless, as “science” has never been clearly defined.) Suppose that journals like Science and Nature printed lots of global warming pieces during warm years, and lots of global cooling pieces during relatively cool years.  Wouldn’t you want and expect climate scientists to take the long view, and not change their models every time the US and Europe were hit by heat waves or cold winters? If this cycle had only happened once, say during the interwar years, it would be mildly embarrassing.  But this entire cycle has now happened twice, in an almost identical fashion.  Even worse, the second cycle was accompanied by almost all the top economics departments dropping economic history and/or history of thought from their course requirements.  Whereas this embarrassing state of affairs should have taught us to put more emphasis on learning about how policy mistakes and theoretical modeling interacted in previous cycles; we reacted in exactly the opposite direction.  Our modern economics grad students know even less of economic history than those who studied decades earlier. We need monetary models that work fine regardless of whether the nominal interest rate is 0% or 100,000%.  For me, that model is market monetarism, but your mileage may vary. PS.  I’m not an expert on Keynes’s later work, but I’m told that late in his life he shifted back toward the center.   (0 COMMENTS)

Today, the Trump campaign lost another election fraud case, in Pennsylvania. It reminded me that, in my recent economic explanation of why this alleged fraud is highly implausible, I forgot one factor: election rigging is usually committed by the government in power, because it is the only group that has the necessary resources and control over election processes. Indeed, election laws and procedures are mainly designed to prevent fraud by governments, which is the main danger. The fraud claimed by the Trump campaign would probably be the only one in the history of democracy to have been committed by the opposition against the government in power. The White House, the Senate, and most state governorships were held by Republicans and Trump allies. This strange fact makes the hairy fraud and conspiracy theories promoted by the Trump campaign even more implausible. Other interesting issues are raised by the Wall Street Journal story (“Court Denies Trump Campaign’s Appeal in Pennsylvania Ballot Challenge,” November 27), when it reports: “Calling an election unfair does not make it so,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas, a Trump appointee, for the three-judge panel. “Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.” Judge Bibas was joined by Judge Michael Chagares and Chief Judge D. Brooks Smith, both appointees of George W. Bush. (A non-gated story about today’s decision is available from AP: “Appeals Court Rejects Trump Challenge of Pennsylvania Race.”) Note that the Pennsylvania ruling was signed by a “Trump judge,” not an “Obama judge” as Trump used to say about judges who made decisions he did not approve. This suggests that many of Trump’s judicial nominations were surprisingly well chosen, as I argued in another post earlier today. The claim of “unfair” election by the Trump crowd is also interesting because that’s how they also attack international trade. They don’t want free trade and free elections, but fair trade and fair elections. I suspect they also want fair speech instead of free speech and fair enterprise instead of free enterprise. As Anthony de Jasay suggests in his book Social Justice and the Indian Rope Trick (see my review in Regulation), fairness resembles social justice: it is now so empty a concept that it just means “nice”—nice from the point of view of the person who invokes it. Perhaps “fairness” is becoming, or has become, the rightists’ magic, sacramental key that corresponds to the left’s “social justice.” (0 COMMENTS)

This is a talk I gave to the local Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, sponsored by California State University, Monterey Bay (CSUMB). The local one is run by Michele Crompton and she does a great job. My topic was about things we should fear a lot and things we shouldn’t fear much. In the middle category was COVID-19. In the “not fear much” category were China (unless you live near China), terrorism, running out of land, genetically modified foods, getting shot by police, and global warming. I’ll leave the “what we should fear a lot” to people who view the video. You can read about Bernard Osher here. If you ever get a chance to give an OLLI talk, I recommend it. The pay is low and, to do a good job, I usually put a fair amount of time into it. But I get articles and blog posts out of that work. As important, I get a great audience. It tends to be older people and what I like about them is that they’re not a random pick. They tend to be quite curious and want to learn. My take on the locals, after giving about 6 of these over the last approximately 8 years, is that they like me but don’t necessarily like my message, especially on this topic. But they ask good questions and it’s a highly civil discussion. Moreover, many of them know a lot. My first OLLI talk was titled “The Cost of War.” My usual style with an audience is to ask questions as I go. It worked really well with that audience. Each time I asked a question of an audience of about 30 people, 5 or 6 hands would go up and I would call on someone randomly who would invariably get the answer right. (As I recall, my early questions were about World War I.) After about the third one, I paused and said, “I love talking to people who know things.” (0 COMMENTS)

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin recently asked the Fed to return some money appropriated by Congress to cover future losses on asset purchases that it might engage in during the Covid-19 epidemic. This action has been highly criticized as the (post-election) timing is suspicious and the pandemic is now getting dramatically worse.  But here I’d like to focus on the politics of the issue. Here’s Yahoo.com: “The only justification for taking what is a legally questionable act of moving these funds out of the reach of the Biden administration is to salt the Earth, to limit their options, and leave the country in a more dangerous place for political purposes,” said Barofsky, now a partner at the law firm of Jenner & Block. “Full stop. There is no legal justification for this.” Barofsky was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2008 to oversee TARP funds used to save banks, insurance companies, and automakers during the Great Financial Crisis. He told Yahoo Finance that there is precedent to reallocating emergency funds, pointing to the Obama administration’s efforts to redirect $225 billion in TARP into the Treasury’s General Fund. Barofsky said an act of Congress was needed to move that money. For the CARES Act money, Barofsky points to Sec. 4027 of the bill, which notes that on January 1, 2026, any remaining funds are to be transferred into the Treasury’s General Fund for deficit reduction. “The statute doesn’t allow him to do this until 2026,” said Barofsky. Ultimately, Barofsky said the Biden administration could choose to ignore Mnuchin’s move and shift the funds back into the ESF once the White House changes hands. But it was the very next sentence that caught my eye: But he said he does not expect the Biden administration to take such aggressive action, adding that he also would not bet on the Fed launching a legal challenge. I don’t understand this claim.  Given that Barofsky believes the action is clearly illegal, why wouldn’t Joe Biden reverse the decision on January 21st?  And why would a reversal be viewed as “aggressive”?  It’s widely expected that Biden will reverse many executive decisions made by the Trump administration; why not this one? In this post I’m not interested in debating the wisdom of this policy.  My own view is that some parts were useful and ought to be made permanent, while other parts were unwise.  What interests me is the politics of executive orders.  It seems like neither the Fed nor the Biden advisors are happy with Mnuchin’s decision.  So why wouldn’t they reverse it? (0 COMMENTS)

A review of Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots, William Morrow Press, 399 pages.   As much as I have enjoyed watching The Boys on Amazon Prime, I confess that I am somewhat worn out with dark revisionings of superheroes. Radical and genre-bending when they first began to appear, much of this work has become as predictable and formulaic as the worst versions of the material it seeks to overturn. I sometimes amuse myself by wondering when genre writers will decide it’s time to do something really radical and write non-dystopian, non-apocalyptic works with contented characters and happy endings.    That said, Natalie Zina Walschots’s novel Hench does explore some new territory. While we have seen novels that focused on sidekicks before (Lexie Dunne’s “Superheroes Anonymous” series, for example) and while we have seen novels that have focused on villains (V.E. Schwab’s Vicious and Austin Grossman’s Soon I Will Be Invincible come to mind), I don’t think we have seen a novel (with the possible exception of The Henchmen’s Book Club by Danny King) that clearly imagines the world of the henchmen who support supervillains.    Our hero, Anna Tromedlov, works data entry temp jobs for supervillains. She is, as the novel opens, a completely insignificant individual in a world occupied by heroes and villains, and preoccupied with their interactions. When a temp job goes wrong, Anna is horribly injured by the biggest hero of her world–a Superman analogue named Supercollider. As a result, her supervillain boss fires her. (In what may be the most villainous moment of the book he does so by sending a fruit basket to her bedside in the hospital…with a pink slip attachedl.)   Anna’s combination of devastating injuries and unemployment sends her on a quest that Econlog readers should find particularly interesting. She begins to calculate the cost of superheroes in lifeyears, using the work of real life economist Ilan Noy as her inspiration. Superhero costs are a common topic for discussion on Reddit, and the website Law and the Multiverse gives the question a good deal of attention as well, but it’s fun to see it brought into a fictional setting.   It’s even more fun when Anna decides to weaponize her blog that counts these costs as a way to take down the superhero who ruined her life. Her carefully calculated, gradual attacks on Supercollider, her growing alliance with the supervillain Leviathan, and her slow transformation from a temporary data-entry clerk to a henchman, and then to a supervillain in her own right provide much of the interest of the novel. Considerable horror (or gross-out humor, depending on the reader’s tastes) is provided by her increased reliance on body modifications to ramp up her power, and by the various ways she finds to deal with the invulnerable flesh of her nemesis Supercollider. The book’s final scenes, where Supercollider is turned into a weapon against himself, are not for the squeamish.   I’m not sure that anything in Hench is really new. The more familiar you are with the genre of superheroes and particularly with the genre of dark superhero reimaginings, the more it will remind you of other things you’ve read before. But Hench is a good read, with a fun economic twist. It’s a comment on modern office culture, the struggles of temp work, and an increasing sense of powerlessness that demands “decisive evidence that once the pieces are assembled, a hero can fall. A king can fall. No matter how absolute the stranglehold of power might seem, I can take them down. The data is there.”   As an Amazon Associate, Econlib earns through qualifying purchases. (0 COMMENTS)

It is, in my opinion, difficult to disagree with the Supreme Court decision that prevented the governor of New York from imposing strict limits on religious attendance for public health reasons—while litigation on the substance of the case continues. But I wish to emphasize two subsidiary points, one being a quibble with the Wall Street Journal’s subtitle: “Justice Amy Coney Barrett cast the pivotal vote to depart from past cases” (“Supreme Court Blocks Covid-19 Restrictions on Religious Services in New York,” November 26, 2020). The majority in the 5-to-4 decision was made of Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Barrett. It’s not false to say that Barrett was a pivotal judge, but is slightly misleading to focus on her and say that she was the pivotal judge if the word is used in the sense of “decisive.” With a majority of one, every Justice who voted on that side was pivotal. Another example: Suppose that Joe Biden had won the popular vote against Donald Trump not by 6,000,000 votes but by a single vote. The probability of that is infinitesimal, but let’s just assume it materialized. Then, each and every voter would have been pivotal. It would not have been false to say that Joe next door was the pivotal voter, but not very enlightening. (Note that recounts and challenges would very likely have switched the majority back and forth a few times, but this is not my point.) In defense of the Journal, however, there is one reason to focus on Justice Barrett as a pivotal judge since she was the latest one nominated by Trump, in controversial circumstances shortly before the November election. If that seat had been left vacant, the Supreme Court would presumably have tied 4-to-4, and the lower court decision would have remained in force, at least for now, supporting Cuomo’s restrictions (if I understand correctly). An observation of a different sort is that all three Justices nominated by outgoing president Donald Trump voted to defend freedom of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment, which is a good point in his favor—although he himself, to say the least, did not demonstrate strong preferences for the free-speech protections in the same amendment. The Supreme Court decision also suggests that conservative judges are often more likely to protect individual liberties than “liberal” ones, even if caveats are in order, including regarding Justice Roberts in this case. We are told that Trump consulted the Federalist Society on judicial nominations instead of relying on his empty and dangerous intuitions. One wishes he had done the same on trade and other economic matters. (0 COMMENTS)