Adam Smith is often called the father of capitalism. It is certainly true that Smith saw the good in a system of what he called “natural liberty,” where people were free to dispose of their resources and skills as they see fit in a market system. But a certain popular caricature of capitalism might lead one to think that Smith was something he was not. In fact, Smith recognized the benefits of commercial society primarily in its tendency to raise the position of the least well off, the “labouring poor,” whose wages and standard of living increase in a thriving, growing, wealthy, free, well-governed nation. His concerns are moral and humane, with concern for what sort of system tends to benefit all without great injustices and finds that commercial society often meets these requirements well. 

Over the last few years, many privacy regulations have come into effect both at the state level and globally. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU, Brazil’s data protection regulation (LGPD), the California Consumer Privacy Rights Act (CPRA), the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act (VCDPA) and Colorado’s Privacy Act (CPA) are just a few of the new privacy regulations. Although all these laws are impactful in their own right, the GDPR was the first and had a far reaching impact, affecting the legal privacy landscape globally. It thrusted many changes onto businesses that operated in the EU. Further, regulators in other jurisdictions, such as California, consider how the EU has drafted and enforced the GDPR when deciding how to implement their privacy regulations, particularly in areas of new technology, like machine learning and automated decision making. 

In a recent post in The Beacon, I discussed the research interests of academic economists as indicated by articles presented at the American Economic Association annual meeting and published in the American Economic Review. This post focuses on the American Economic Association distinguished lecture, presented at the Association’s annual meeting and published in that same issue of the American Economic Review.

The American Economic Association holds its annual meeting in early January. It posts a call for papers to its members, and a selection committee decides which papers will be presented in concurrent sessions at the meetings. In May, a selected group of papers from the meeting is published in the American Economic Review. This year, 622 papers were presented at the meeting, and 115 of them were published in the May issue of the American Economic Review.

Good news! Instead of going broke in 2033, Social Security’s Old Age and Survivors’ Insurance (OASI) trust fund will run out of money in 2034. If the program’s Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund is diverted to pay retirement benefits, it will last until 2035!

Two days after the mass murder of 19 students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, the California Senate passed SB-1273 School safety: mandatory notifications. The measure, authored by state Sen. Steven Bradford, ends a requirement for schools to report violent threats from students to law enforcement. The measure also excludes from the notification requirement “a violation involving certain instruments, such as an instrument that expels metallic projectiles, a spot marker gun, a razor blade, or a box cutter.” 

What a ride.

The much Pandemic-delayed movie Top Gun: Maverick launched into movie theaters recently and is set to make records. The commercial box office success is well earned. It’s a better movie than the original Top Gun, in drama as well as action.

A US News and World Reports article documents there are now nine confirmed cases of monkeypox in the US across seven states as of May 27th, 2022. Globally, the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota estimates 225 monkeypox infections across 21 countries. Suspected global infections (testing for monkeypox is tedious) are higher.

When I get to criminal law at the end of the semester, I ask my law & economics students, “why do mass shootings seem to be on the rise?” The recent horrific events in Buffalo, NY, and Uvalde, TX, raise that question again. The headlines were followed by the usual demands to “do something,” meaning enact more stringent gun control laws, which, of course, criminals will not obey.

On May 27, 2022, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) announced it was responsible for starting two fires in New Mexico that grew and combined to become the state’s largest-ever wildfire.