Economics

The War No One Mentions

by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2008

With all the campaign talk about the various wars in which America is involved — the war on Iraq, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on illiteracy, the war on terrorism, and the war on Afghanistan — there is one war that goes unacknowledged and unspoken about ...

The Legacy of Milton Friedman, Part 2

by Doug Bandow April 1, 2008

Part 1 | Part 2 Milton Friedman also was adept at proposing practical solutions to practical problems. He believed strongly in liberty, but he recognized that he needed to promote it practically. Nowhere was his ability in this area more evident than in his work on the All-Volunteer Force (AVF). He served on the official ...

The Government’s Chickens Are Back

by Sheldon Richman March 14, 2008

When a private company screws up, there is no shortage of people demanding more government intrusion in the marketplace. But when the government screws up, they don’t call for less government. They call for more. The economy is slowing down, and the government is at fault. But, if anything, the policymakers ...

The Legacy of Milton Friedman, Part 1

by Doug Bandow March 1, 2008

Part 1 | Part 2 It has been more than a year since Milton Friedman passed from our lives. What a world he departed. The desire for liberty burns ever brightly. The forces of statism resist ever strongly. How we miss his presence. Although he has left us, his ideas live ...

The Oil-Addiction Fallacy

by William L. Anderson February 1, 2008

Watch any talking head, and when the subject comes to energy, one can expect to hear the mantra, Americans are “addicted” to oil, and especially “foreign oil.” This is repeated as though the repetition is proof that the premise is true. Thus, American taxpayers are currently being forced to contribute billions of dollars — and will be dunned many billions ...

The Nightmare of the New Deal, Part 2

by George Leef January 1, 2008

Part 1 | Part 2 The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes (HarperCollins, 2007); 464 pages. Who were the good guys? They were people who fought against the collectivization favored by Roosevelt and his “brain trust.” Shlaes devotes a full chapter ...

The Nightmare of the New Deal, Part 1

by George Leef December 1, 2007

Part 1 | Part 2 The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression by Amity Shlaes (HarperCollins, 2007); 464 pages. If you ask a random sample of Americans who know (or think they know) something about U.S. history to discuss the twin subjects of the Great Depression and the ...

The Hidden Consequences of Government Programs

by Bart Frazier September 1, 2007

One of the more insidious effects of government production of goods and services is that the products that would have been produced in a free market — and the innovations that would have arisen — are never seen and therefore are never appreciated. That phenomenon helps to perpetuate the idea that without government intervention, certain ...

Mugabe’s Fatal Conceit

by Ralph R. Reiland August 29, 2007

Readers of the New York Times got a front-page example recently of what F.A. Hayek called “the fatal conceit” — the idea that some great mind or committee can do a better job than the private market in organizing and directing an economy. Hayek argued that the market automatically coordinates the ...

Autocracy Comes to America

by Sheldon Richman August 24, 2007

We appear to live in a republic. But look closely; it’s clearer every day that we live in a de facto autocracy. President Bush has managed to amass an astounding amount of power simply by scaring the American people and Congress into thinking that our continued existence as a society depends ...

New Deal, Old Deal

by Sheldon Richman May 1, 2007

It’s commonly held that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal was a radical break with America’s past. Both fans and foes of Roosevelt embrace this position. Many libertarians join conservatives in believing that things were going satisfactorily in the United States until Roosevelt got his hands on power. Some take a slightly ...

That Horrible Income Gap

by George Leef May 1, 2007

Karl Marx’s biggest selling point has always been his argument that workers are systematically underpaid under capitalism. They produce value and greedy capitalist owners cheat them out of it. Good economists have understood for centuries that in a free (and therefore competitive) labor market, it isn’t possible to underpay anyone for long. That fact, however, ...