Daily Articles

Capitalism, Freedom, and Progress

by George Leef March 1, 2020

Capitalism in America: An Economic History of the United States by Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge (Penguin Press, 2018); 496 pages. Almost everyone knows Alan Greenspan as the long-serving chairman of the Federal Reserve System. What far fewer know is that in his younger days, Greenspan was a devotee of Ayn Rand and her anti-collectivist philosophy. ...

Triple Threat

by Laurence M. Vance February 26, 2020

What do minimum-wage laws, child-labor laws, and overtime-pay laws have in common other than that they originated in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938? The FLSA established a national minimum wage of 25¢ an hour, mandated time-and-a-half for overtime in certain jobs, prohibited most child labor, and established a 44-hour work week, which was lowered to 40 hours ...

The Technocrats Will Not Save Us

by Richard M. Ebeling February 25, 2020

Besides the certainty, as they say, of death and taxes, one other highly likely event will be an end to the general “good times” of relatively low price inflation and low unemployment in America. In other words, the United States will eventually experience worsening inflation at some point, as well as another general economic downturn. The question is, what ...

Gun-Toting Cops Endanger Students and Turn the Schools into Prisons

by John W. Whitehead February 20, 2020

"Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning.”—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes Just when you thought the government couldn’t get any more tone-deaf about civil liberties and the growing need to ...

Happy 90th Birthday, Professor Israel Kirzner!

by Richard M. Ebeling February 19, 2020

Even in an era when modern medicine and technologies are adding to people’s lifetimes, along with the gains in general human economic betterment, it still stands as a notable event when someone marks their 90th birthday. On February 13th, renowned “Austrian” economist, Israel M. Kirzner, celebrated his reaching of that important milestone. It is difficult to imagine the revival of ...

A Case for Not Giving Up on the American Dream

by John W. Whitehead February 14, 2020

“We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”—Benjamin Franklin Listen: we don’t have to agree about everything. We don’t even have to agree about most things. We don’t have to love each other. We don’t even have to like each other. And we certainly don’t need to think alike or dress alike or worship alike or vote ...

The New Totalitarians

by Richard M. Ebeling February 12, 2020

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The defeat of Nazism in Europe was seen as not only a victory over tyranny, terror, and mass murder, but a triumph for the preservation of many of the most cherished human freedoms, including freedom of speech and the press, and free association. Such freedoms ...

The Impeachment Hearings Inadvertently Show the Insidious Nature of U.S. Foreign Policy

by Laurence M. Vance February 11, 2020

Although many Americans may not know what a quid pro quo is, any American would have to be living under a rock not to know that House Democrats impeached President Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress stemming, they alleged, from his temporarily delaying the release of U.S. military aid to Ukraine to pressure the Ukrainian ...

Compulsory Education – The Bane of Learning and Freedom

by Christine Smith February 10, 2020

Approximately 50-million students, bound by state compulsory attendance laws, are trapped in what is essentially a prison of their bodies and minds. Most Americans never question school compulsory attendance laws itself but instead focus on what occurs inside the classroom. Public schools, which can also be called government schools, are notorious for a wide array of problems. From class size ...

He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune

by Laurence M. Vance February 7, 2020

Public education has survived another National School Choice Week. Since 2011, National School Choice Week (NSCW) has been celebrated the last week in January. During NSCW “schools, homeschool groups, organizations and individuals plan tens of thousands of independent events” to “raise public awareness of the different K-12 education options available to children and families while also spotlighting the benefits ...

The Mixed Economy Is a Mess

by Richard M. Ebeling February 5, 2020

Election years tend to polarize people’s views about political parties, proposed social and economic policies, and the candidates running for high governmental office. This presidential election cycle is not only no different, it is far more so.  This shows itself especially in how many younger Americans view the political, economic and social system under which they live. According to a ...

Monetary Destruction in America

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2020

The Constitution made it crystal clear what the official money of the United States was to be when it called the federal government into existence. That money was to be gold coins and silver coins, not paper money. Article 1, Section 10, of the Constitution, which is a restriction on the power of the states, states, “No State shall ... ...