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Edwin Cannan: An Economist Who Protested against Big Government

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One hundred years ago, the countries of Europe were trying to recover from the consequences of the First World War. It was not only the cost in human life (estimated to be more than 20 million people) and the military expenditures of nearly $5 trillion in today’s dollars. It was the political and ideological legacies of the war, as well. The relatively classical liberal institutions that had generally prevailed in many of the Western nations before the war had been weakened by the wave of wartime controls and central planning introduced by the belligerent governments. Socialists were calling for the end to capitalism and its permanent replacement with government peacetime central planning. Others called for a new “social liberalism” of extensive and intrusive government interventions and welfare state redistributions. Few were the voices still emphasizing the importance of a free-market order and the value of personal liberty from overbearing government. One of those voices was the British economist Edwin Cannan (1861–1935), ...

The Paternalist Instincts of a Central Planner

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Both supporters and critics of President Joe Biden have been surprised and amazed by the immensity of his political agenda and his recent actions for a far more expansive role for the federal government than many had been expecting from his time in office. He is clearly on a “mission” and is pursuing it with seeming urgency. So, what is driving him, and is this what the task of presidents is supposed to be all about? New York Times columnist, David Brooks, recently did a lengthy phone interview with Biden and conveyed his understanding and impressions of what guides the president in pushing for a larger and more intrusive government in people’s lives. Whenever a politician tries to tell you what drives him in pursuing government office and his motivations for wanting political power and authority, it must always be taken with a grain of salt. After all, when have such public pronouncements not always ended up with ...

Monetary Inflation’s Game of Hide-and-Seek

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The May 12, 2021, press release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting on the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the month of April sent the stock markets tumbling for two days and generated fodder for the news pundits with the announcement that the CPI measure of the cost-of-living had increased 4.2 percent at an annualized rate, or nearly 62 percent higher than in March when the annualized rate was 2.6 percent. The era of relatively low rate of price inflation was feared to be ending. For almost a decade, despite significant increases in the money supply, CPI-measured price inflation remained “tame.” Between March 2011 and March 2021, the M-2 money supply (cash, checking accounts, and small savings) went from $8.94 trillion to $19.9 trillion, or a 222.5 percent increase. Just in 2020, M-2 expanded by nearly 25 percent. Yet, despite this, the CPI only went up by a little less than 20 percent, from 223 to 266.8 ...

Hayek’s Still Relevant Response to Today’s Paternalist Planners

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Among many American “progressives” and those in the Democratic Party establishment, there is a heady euphoria that their day has again come, that there is an opportunity to establish and implement their dream of a far more comprehensive and commanding government presence over the society. Their vision already promises well over $6 trillion of additional federal government spending; and this ...

Conservatives and Liberals: Immigration Socialists

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Republicans love to accuse Democrats of favoring open borders. That’s partly because Democrats favor granting “amnesty” to immigrants who have been here illegally for a long period of time.  Legalizing illegal immigrants, however, is a far cry from open borders. Open borders entails a complete dismantling of American’s immigration-control system, including an abolition of the Border Patrol. ...

The Case for Freedom in Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Ayn Rand

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Three names are widely associated with the cause of human freedom and economic liberty in the twentieth century: Friedrich A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Ayn Rand. Indeed, it can be argued that Hayek’s Road to Serfdom (1944) and Constitution of Liberty (1960), Mises’s Socialism (1936) and Human Action (1949), and Rand’s novels The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged ...