New Op-ed at Fox News: Why Political Flip-Flopping Matters

My newest op-ed at Fox News can be read in full here:

What restrains politicians and businesses from acting dishonestly? A lot of people would answer: nothing.

Periodic political and corporate scandals have created a popular image of politicians and businessmen as little more than a collection of cheats, liars and crooks. However, while there will always be some dishonest people in any profession, the vast majority of American politicians and businessmen do not end up being frog marched out of their offices in handcuffs with their heads held low in shame before a gaggle of news cameras.

What helps keep companies honest is the threat that if they cheat customers, people won’t buy from them again. But that won’t work for politicians. Politicians don’t always have the incentive of re-election because eventually they all face a last term in office. Politicians retire at some point. They can’t live forever.

So, if it isn't the threat of facing the voters, what could ensure that politicians keep their promises?

There has been a lot academic work studying this question, and the way to solve the problem is to elect politicians who inherently value the policy positions that they take. . . . .

Discussion of impact of women's suffrage on government growth

Gaston Phebus has this discussion of Freedomnomics:

Celui qui a découvert pourquoi l’État-Providence (qui s’est subséquemment révélé comme le parfait aspirateur d’immigration) a été mis en place, c’est John Lott. Je le considère comme l’un des meilleurs économistes américains de la jeune génération, même s’il est loin d’avoir recueilli les lauriers qu’il méritait. Il a une fâcheuse tendance à s’intéresser à des questions si chargées au niveau politique qu’elles peuvent torpiller une carrière. Il s’est plus d’une fois fait éjecter d’une université prestigieuse sous la pression du maire ou du gouverneur parce qu’il avait dit haut et fort ce qu’il fallait taire.

Ses recherches montrent que l’inflation sans précédente (et insoutenable) du rôle de l’État est due au vote des femmes. Dès qu’on permet aux femmes de voter, bingo ! l’État commence à s’occuper de corriger tout un tas d’ « injustices sociales » en mettant en place des mécanismes de redistribution massifs – qui aspirent aussi toute la misère du monde.

Voici un graphique montrant comment, dans les 10 années qui suivent l’obtention du droit de vote par les femmes, les dépenses de l’État doublent. Ce doublement est dû à la mise en place des allocation en tous genres qui forment l’État-Providence. C’est extrait de la page 163 du livre Freedomnomics de John Lott.

Brave or foolish?

A nice note on my work can be found here:

John R. Lott, economist and senior research scientist at the University of Maryland is a brave man. In 2001 he published a study that concluded that legalized abortion increased murder rates from 1/2 to 7%. This refuted the study by the authors of Freakonomics.
According to this article in Cybercast News Service, the Economist magazine tells of two Federal Reserve Bank of Boston economists who said the Freakonomics study was error-filled and went on to say, "To be politically incorrect is one thing; to be simply incorrect, quite another." . . .