Afternoon roundup

The notables from the lunchtime closing of the browser tabs:

• Nancy Maclean thinks there's some kind of Koch - George Mason conspiracy to subvert democracy. To make her case, she misquotes Tyler Cowen and James Buchanan in ways that reverse the meaning of what they'd written. And here's more on Buchanan and racism. John Small takes issue with my liking James Buchanan; I don't trust a single thing in MacLean's book to be accurate, so I see no reason to go through the book and debunk it. 
• Seattle's $15 minimum wage reduced earnings among low-wage workers by cutting their hours. Here's the NBER paper.
• Dave Lane has an interesting suggestion: get tech students in high schools to provide the tech support. 
• Ontario has a messed up alcohol system. The Liquor Control Board runs all retail sales of hard liquor, and they're up against the Ontario Public Service Employees Union. One union's fight with one government monopoly retailer almost shut down Ontario's access to the good stuff. One might expect that unions have inordinate bargaining power in that kind of scenario. 
• Tim Harford has a great roundup on intellectual property issues. 
• The usual suspects are mad that there isn't a ban on having cartoon characters on cereal boxes. I don't know how you explain rising obesity with a fixed effect: cartoon characters have been on cereal boxes at least since the 1970s. Mum generally refused to buy the ones with the cartoon characters, taking it as a signal that they weren't as good for us. I can still hum the tune from the ads for Count Chocula and Frankenberry though. 
• Does inequality hurt economic growth? Maybe in less developed countries, otherwise not. Note too that where the route to riches is rent-seeking, you expect more inequality and less growth. 
• America moves a step closer to enabling supersonic passenger transport. Letting supersonics conform to the noise restrictions on older subsonic planes rather than the requirements on new planes would reduce fuel burn by allowing more aerodynamic engines. New Zealand should do the same if it wants to be ready when the new generation of supersonic passengers planes is ready. 
• Decentralisation doesn't work as well without fiscal equalisation. I liked this piece in National Affairs. I'll likely use it in the coming semester's Public Finance course I'm teaching at Victoria University. 

Battling plutocrats

I've read a lot lately about how evil the Koch family is for using its wealth to try to affect policy. I've not read much about how evil George Soros is for using his wealth to try to affect policy. The Koch family spends its money trying to make sure folks know about law & economics and to help folks having their houses expropriated by local governments. Soros uses his to campaign for marijuana legalization and international democratic movements. Koch made his money in chemicals and oil; Soros made his in currency speculation.

Seems odd that everyone loves to hate on Koch and loves to love Soros. And seems especially odd that anti-Koch demonstrations get funded by Soros.

Palm Springs, California -At the front gates of the Rancho Las Palmas resort, a few hundred liberals rallied Sunday against "corporate greed" and polluters. They chanted for the arrest of billionaires Charles and David Koch, and their ire was also directed at the other free market-oriented businessmen invited here by the Koch brothers to discuss free markets and electoral strategies.

Billionaires poisoning our politics was the central theme of the protests. But nothing is quite as it seems in modern politics: The protest's organizer, the nonprofit Common Cause, is funded by billionaire George Soros.

Common Cause has received $2 million from Soros's Open Society Institute in the past eight years, according to grant data provided by Capital Research Center. Two panelists at Common Cause's rival conference nearby -- President Obama's former green jobs czar, Van Jones, and blogger Lee Fang -- work at the Center for American Progress, which was started and funded by Soros but, as a 501(c)4 nonprofit "think tank," legally conceals the names of its donors.

In other words, money from billionaire George Soros and anonymous, well-heeled liberals was funding a protest against rich people's influence on politics.

When Politico reporter Ken Vogel pointed out that Soros hosts similar "secret" confabs, CAP's Fang responded on Twitter: "don't you think there's a very serious difference between donors who help the poor vs. donors who fund people to kill government, taxes on rich?"

In less than 140 characters, Fang had epitomized the myopic liberal view of money in politics: Conservative money is bad, and linked to greed, while liberal money is self-evidently philanthropic.

Next we'll have an angry mob of Koch-funded Tea Partiers having at a gaggle of Soros-funded hipsters. Enough of these proxy fights between Koch and Soros. I think it's time for Fight Club. Pay per view, with profits to the winner's preferred charity. Vegas. I'll put $100 on Charles Koch at odds up to 2:1 (I pay $200 if I lose); 3:1 if it's David rather than Charles for the Koch side (relative youth). Any takers?

I like much of the work Soros does - especially his push for marijuana legalization. I'm less a fan of some of his other work, but I'd hardly think him evil for it. I've great admiration for the Kochs' work in advancing economic freedoms - especially through the Institute for Justice. I'm more skeptical that the Tea Party will turn out to be all that great a boon for freedom. Soros-funded anti-Koch rallies seem rather silly; the protesters, pawns of a different plutocrat, are even sillier.