Economics

Jerome Powell’s Quest for Economic Stability Is Destabilizing

by Richard M. Ebeling September 8, 2021

When the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank speaks the financial markets listen, and this was no different with Jerome Powell’s virtual address to the annual meeting of central bankers at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. What they got is what Harry Truman complained about when hearing from his economic advisors: “On the one hand, ‘this,’ but on the other hand, ...

Appreciating F. A. Hayek’s Insights on Money and the Business Cycle

by Richard M. Ebeling July 14, 2021

Over the last few months, fears over rising price inflation have, again, become the focus of political policy makers and media pundits. While generally rising prices have a variety of deleterious effects, attention is often not given to how inflationary processes work, their negative effects beneath the surface of measured movements in the “price level.” Ninety years ago, the ...

The Political Paternalists Take Aim at Milton Friedman

by Richard M. Ebeling June 28, 2021

The cancel culture movement has caught wide attention with its insistence on “cleansing” the country of persons, statues, building names, or any other public monument accused of being in any way tainted by or identified with American slavery or racism, past or present. This has served as a “cover” to delegitimize virtually anyone not aligned with or acquiescent to ...

The Labor Shortage Is a Government-Contrived Scarcity

by Richard M. Ebeling June 15, 2021

Not long ago, my wife and I decided to go out to our favorite Thai restaurant not far from our home in the Charleston, South Carolina area, which we had not been to for well over a year. With so many retail businesses having returned to a no-mask, no-distancing “normality,” we were looking forward to a tasty inside, sit-down ...

Edwin Cannan: An Economist Who Protested against Big Government

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2021

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 ...

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

by Richard M. Ebeling May 12, 2021

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 ...

What Is Missing in the Arguments against a Minimum-Wage Hike?

by Laurence M. Vance May 1, 2021

For several years now, Democrats, liberals, progressives, Democratic socialists, and socialists not afraid to proudly wear the name have been agitating for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Organized labor groups, many large corporations, and organizations such as Fight for $15 have joined them. A standard 40-hour workweek at $15 an hour results in ...

My Case against Minimum-Wage Laws

by George Leef May 1, 2021

Minimum-wage laws are again in the news, as Joe Biden and his political allies in Congress seek to push the national minimum from its current level of $7.25 per hour up to $15 per hour. Some politicians, Sen. Bernie Sanders for one, declare that people can barely survive even on $15 per hour. If the law takes the minimum ...

Carl Menger’s Theory of Institutions and Market Processes

by Richard M. Ebeling April 14, 2021

This year marks the 150th anniversary of a radical change in the way economists came to understand the logic of human decision-making and the formation of prices in society. There occurred what is often referred to as the “marginalist revolution” in place of the classical economists’ notion of a “labor theory of value,” which was generally accepted from the ...

Moritz J. Bonn: A Classical Liberal Voice in a Collectivist World

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2021

Ninety years ago, the United States and most of the rest of the Western industrial world was in the throes of the Great Depression. Usually demarcated as having begun with the U.S. stock market crash of October 1929, the Depression is most often dated as having reached bottom at the end of 1932 and the early part of 1933. Unemployment, ...

Republicans and the Minimum Wage

by Laurence M. Vance December 7, 2020

Republicans claim to believe in limited government, the free market, and the free-enterprise system, but their claims often ring hollow. A case in point is the outcome of a recent ballot measure in Florida. It is not just men and women who won elections in the fifty states last month. According to Ballotpedia, “Voters in 32 ...

The Strange Thing about Biden’s Economic Agenda

by Laurence M. Vance October 5, 2020

Thirteen recipients of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, representing the universities of Georgetown, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley, Chicago, Yale, Columbia, New York, and Stanford have issued an endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s economic agenda: We the undersigned express our support for the economic principles and policies of Joe Biden. While each of us ...