Economics

The Libertarian Angle: The Minimum Wage

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 28, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger discusses the hot topics of the day. This week, the folly of the minimum wage. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast here.

The Libertarian Angle: Austrian Economics

by Jacob G. Hornberger April 7, 2015

Each week, FFF president Jacob Hornberger discusses the hot topics of the day. This week: the principles of Austrian ecnomics with special guest Richard M. Ebeling. The Libertarian Angle airs weekly. Go to the podcast here.

Monopoly and Aggression

by Sheldon Richman April 1, 2015

The concepts monopoly and aggression are intimately related, like lock and key, or mother and child. You cannot fully understand the first without understanding the second. Most of us are taught to think of a monopoly as simply any lone seller of a good or service, but that definition is fraught with problems, as Murray Rothbard, Austrian economists generally, and ...

Economic Delusions, Political Demagoguery, and Ideological Deceptions

by Richard M. Ebeling March 10, 2015

We live in a time, as, indeed, mankind has lived already for a long time, in which economic delusions, political demagoguery, and ideological deceptions abound due to the power lusting of those who wish to gain control of government to serve their own ends at others’ expense. Suppose someone were to ask you the easiest and quickest way to drive ...

The Folly and Presumption of Big Government Social Engineers

by Richard M. Ebeling March 3, 2015

One of the social mythologies of our time is that it is in the power and ability of governments to remake society in any image or shape that those with political authority consider “good,” “right,” and “just” for mankind. No other idea has caused more horror and hardship in modern times. The extreme attempts at such “social engineering” in the ...

Consumers’ Sovereignty and Natural vs. Contrived Scarcities

by Richard M. Ebeling February 23, 2015

One of the great myths about the capitalist system is the presumption that businessmen make profits at the expense of the consumers and workers in society. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the free market, consumers are the sovereign rulers who determine what gets produced, and with what qualities and features. The sovereign consumers also determine who will ...

TGIF: The Economic Way of Thinking about Health Care

by Sheldon Richman February 20, 2015

I realize Mike Lupica is a sports columnist -- and that Howard Cosell called sports "the toy department of life" -- but maybe that's what makes Lupica's recent declaration about Obamacare all the more representative a reaction. Appearing on a morning cable news program, Lupica declared that “health insurance for all is a noble idea.” He repeated this a few ...

Two Kinds of Income Inequality

by Sheldon Richman January 22, 2015

Income inequality is back in the news, propelled by an Oxfam International report and President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. The question is whether government needs to do something about this — or whether government needs to undo many things. Measuring income inequality is no simple thing, which is one source of disagreement between ...

Why Washington and Wall Street Are Better Off Living Apart (video)

by John Tamny January 6, 2015

On December 18, 2014 John Tamny delivered this talk to a private audience at The Future of Freedom Foundation. John Tamny is Political Economy editor at Forbes, a senior economic adviser to Toreador Research & Trading, and editor of RealClearMarkets.com

TGIF: Monopoly and Aggression

by Sheldon Richman December 19, 2014

The concepts monopoly and aggression are intimately related, like lock and key, or mother and son. You cannot fully understand the first without understanding the second. Most of us are taught to think of a monopoly as simply any lone seller of a good or service, but this definition is fraught with problems, as Murray Rothbard, Austrian economists generally, and ...

Hayek’s Warning: The Social Engineer’s Pretense of Knowledge

by Richard M. Ebeling December 2, 2014

Forty years ago, on December 11, 1974, Austrian economist, Friedrich A. Hayek, formally received that year’s Nobel Prize in Economics at the official ceremonies in Stockholm, Sweden. He delivered a lecture called, “The Pretense of Knowledge,” which forcefully challenged all those who believe that government has the wisdom or ability to successfully plan the economic affairs of society. His primary ...

Bastiat on the Socialization of Wealth

by Sheldon Richman December 1, 2014

That … veil which is spread before the eyes of the ordinary man, which even the attentive observer does not always succeed in casting aside, prevents us from seeing the most marvelous of all social phenomena: real wealth constantly passing from the domain of private property into the communal domain. Wealth marvelously passing from the private to the communal domain? ...