Economics

Rube Goldberg Economics

by Rich Schwartzman September 16, 2011

“Since ‘economic growth’ is today’s great problem, and our present Administration is promising to ‘stimulate’ it — to achieve general prosperity by ever wider government controls, while spending an unproduced wealth ...” Any contemporary libertarian or Austrian-school economist could have written those words. The quotation, however, is from Ayn Rand’s opening paragraph to the essay “Let Us Alone,” published in ...

Stimulus II Won’t Work, Either

by Sheldon Richman September 16, 2011

President Obama won’t use the “stimulus” label to describe his nearly half-trillion-dollar jobs bill, but that refusal can’t hide the fact that he has no idea how economies recover from recessions. “Stimulus” is a tainted label because his $800 billion bill in 2009 was a failure. His economic team promised that passing that bill would keep unemployment from exceeding ...

Obama’s War on Prosperity and Freedom

by James Bovard September 12, 2011

On September 7, 2011, James Bovard gave the following speech at The Future of Freedom Foundations Economic Liberty Lecture Series. The speech can viewed below in its entirety. James Bovard is the author of nine books, including Attention Deficit Democracy (2006), The Bush Betrayal (2004), and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty (1994). He has written for ...

Give Thanks to Price Gougers

by Fergus Hodgson September 7, 2011

Some things never cease to amaze me, for example, the willingness of state officials to vilify and prosecute those who dare to raise prices during an emergency. As far as superficial demagoguery and economic illiteracy go, those initiatives are right up there. Thirty-one states have some form of anti-price-gouging law, and a recent statement from North ...

Is There a Right to Earn a Living?

by George Leef September 3, 2011

The Right to Earn a Living: Economic Freedom and the Law by Timothy Sandefur (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2010) Is there a right to earn a living? Most Americans would answer, “Of course there is, but ...” Following that “but” you would get a long list of exceptions and qualifications that whittle away at the right, such as “but ...

Debt and Financial Repression

by Tim Kelly September 1, 2011

Despite all the Sturm und Drang surrounding this summer’s debate concerning the debt limit, there was never any doubt that Congress would vote to increase it. It was all political theater because there was never the political will on Capitol Hill to impose the kind of spending cuts that would have been necessary had it not been raised. So the ...

Paul Krugman and Military Keynesianism

by Tim Kelly August 30, 2011

The Princeton economist Paul Krugman recently appeared on CNN’s GPS hosted by Fareed Zakaria and offered up this pearl of economic wisdom: It’s very hard to get inflation in a depressed economy. But if you had a program of government spending plus an expansionary policy by the Fed, you could get that. So, if you think about using all of ...

The Continuing Economic Depression, Part 2

by William L. Anderson June 18, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 Contrary to popular belief, economic downturns in a free-market economy do not linger or continue for many years. The Great Depression was “great” because government policies made sure that the calamity became ingrained in American life for a decade. One can only hope that the present economic difficulties in the United States will not ...

The Continuing Economic Depression, Part 1

by William L. Anderson May 16, 2011

Part 1 | Part 2 More than three years ago, it became clear that the housing bubble was about to burst, and that the U.S. economy would be in for a very rough patch. In the three years since the collapse of the financial entities behind the mortgage boom, we have seen the U.S. government spend trillions of dollars ...

Not Even the Sky Is the Limit

by Laurence M. Vance May 11, 2011

The scheduled launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour last month was supposed to be notable, not just because it was to be the last launch of this particular shuttle, but because of two special guests who traveled to the Space Center to witness the now-delayed launch. President Obama traveled to Florida for the launch, as did Gabrielle Giffords, the member ...

Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights Against Progressive Reform (video)

by David E. Bernstein February 16, 2011

On February 7, 2011, David E. Bernstien gave the following speech at The Future of Freedom Foundation’s “Economic Liberty Lecture Series.” The speech can viewed below in its entirety. David E. Bernstein is Foundation Professor at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia, where he has been teaching since 1995. He was a Visiting Professor at ...

The Physiocrats

by Wendy McElroy December 1, 2010

The Physiocrats, a group of 18th-century French economists, are often credited with founding Western political economy — the study of “laws” governing the production and distribution of wealth. The word “law” is not used in a legal sense. Rather it refers to a principle or governing rule, much as one might speak of the laws of physics. The Greek word ...