My 2011 article “Foot Voting, Political Ignorance, and Constitutional Design” is now available on SSRN, after a delay due to policies of the publisher. Here’s the abstract: The strengths and weaknesses of federalism have been debated for centuries. But one major possible advantage of building decentralization and limited government into a constitution has been largely […]
Archive | Voting With Your Feet
The Dangerous Growth of State Dependence on Federal Funds
Tad DeHaven of the Cato Institute has a good post highlighting the data on state governments’ growing dependence on federal funds. Since 2001, federal grants have risen from 25.7% of state government spending to 34.1% today. Most of that growth has occurred since the present recession began in 2008. One of the main distinctive benefits […]
Foot Voting for Freedom
Political scientist Jason Sorens presents some interesting new data showing that people tend to “vote with their feet” for states with greater freedom when they make migration decisions. He shows that, controlling for other variables (such as climate and cost of living), people tend to migrate towards states with greater economic and personal freedom, and […]
California Dreamin’ of Secession
Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone recently called for southern California to secede and form a new state: Is the state of California about to go “South”? Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone apparently thinks so, after proposing that the county lead a campaign for as many as 13 Southern California counties to secede from the state. […]
Many Black New Yorkers Vote With Their Feet for the South
In a reversal of historical trends, many black New Yorkers are voting with their feet and moving to the South. In the early twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of southern blacks moved to northern cities in part to escape southern racism and oppressive Jim Crow laws. Today, as the New York Times reports [HT: Josh […]
Passover and Voting with Your Feet for Freedom
Passover is perhaps the ultimate holiday for people like me who celebrate the freedom-enhancing potential of voting with your feet. After all, it’s about people who voted with with their feet to escape slavery. Economist Arnold Kling, however, is more skeptical. He poses the following “libertarian seder questions”: 1. Why did the Egyptians not attempt […]
Federalism and Tort Reform
By Orin Kerr on February 13, 2011 7:43 pm in Commerce Clause, Federalism, Torts, Voting With Your Feet
Cornell lawprof William Jacobson detects a potential contradiction in Republican politicians’ view on constitutional federalism [HT: Steve Bainbridge]. Many of them claim that the Obamacare individual mandate falls outside of Congress’ power, but simultaneously support federally mandated tort reform that would override state tort law: If we are against the federal government forcing us to […]
More On Libertarianism and Migration
New Zealand economist Eric Crampton has responded to my post commenting on his query about why so few libertarians move to New Zealand despite the fact that New Zealand is (slightly) freer than the United States. I actually agree with much of what he says in this post, which makes several good points. But I […]
Do People Vote With Their Feet for Economic Freedom?
If libertarians value liberty so much, wonders New Zealand-based libertarian economist Eric Crampton, why don’t more of them move to New Zealand? The latest Heritage [Foundation] survey puts New Zealand again above the US on economic freedom. If we care about a bundle of freedoms rather than just economic freedom, I think NZ does better […]
Reports from the Front Lines of “Snowmageddon”
Megan McArdle summarizes the post-“snowmageddon” state of Washington, DC, which isn’t good: You will probably have noticed that I did not post this morning. That’s because sometime before 8 am, I decided that I should get to the grocery store and pick up my lung medicine in the hiatus between snows. Four hours later, I […]
Let Haitians Vote with their Feet
Stanford economist Paul Romer suggests an overlooked strategy for helping Haitians – letting them move abroad to countries with better political and economic institutions: Even if the motivation is humanitarian, letting a military intervention morph into a long-lasting occupation in some part of a country would risk the kind of violent opposition that colonialism generated […]
Underfunded Public Pensions as “Stranded” Costs? Two Trillion Dollars?
By Kenneth Anderson on January 5, 2010 9:17 am in California, Economic LIberties, Economy, Voting With Your Feet
The Financial Times runs a story today by Francesco Guerrera and Nicole Bullock on the looming problems of underfunded public pensions at the state and local level in the United States. The news story cites a new study by Orin Kramer, chairman of New Jersey’s pension fund: The estimate by Orin Kramer will fuel investors’ […]
More on California Tax-Services Model – William Voegeli Responds to Comments
By Kenneth Anderson on November 9, 2009 4:14 pm in California, Economy, Housing, Property Rights, Regulation, Voting With Your Feet
Last week I blogged about a very interesting article in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal by Claremont Review of Books contributing editor William Voegeli titled “The Big-Spending, High-Taxing, Lousy Services Paradigm” (Autumn 2009). It compared the tax-services models of California and Texas. VC commenters were spirited as ever and raised a number of important questions. Although […]
The California versus Texas Model, and Public Choice
By Kenneth Anderson on November 2, 2009 9:27 pm in California, Economy, Housing, Politics, Regulation, Voting With Your Feet
William Voegeli, a contributing editor at The Claremont Review of Books, has an excellent essay in Manhattan Journal comparing the economic performance of California and Texas. (I believe a short opinion page version appeared recently in the LAT.) Among other things, the article provides a good example for how a public choice analysis can be […]