People say that every civilization must finally fall into ruin and disintegrate. There are eminent supporters of this idea. One was a German teacher, Spengler, and another one, much better known, was the English historian, Toynbee. They tell us that our civilization...
Under interventionist ideas, it is the duty of the government to support, to subsidize, to give privileges to special groups. The idea of the eighteenth century statesmen was that the legislators had special ideas about the common good. But what we have today,...
In the Age of Enlightenment in the years in which the North Americans founded their independence, and a few years later, when the Spanish and Portuguese colonies were transformed into independent nations, the prevailing mood in Western civilization was optimistic. At...
Who’d have thought an inanimate object could teach a lesson in economics? Yet that’s exactly what a first-aid kit did. Several kits, actually, wall-mounted cabinets in the buildings where I work. Now we’re not just talking Band-Aids and iodine here....
Disagreement with the world’s environmentalist wackos doesn’t mean that one is for dirty air and water, against conservation and for species extinction. Dr. Richard Stroup, Montana State University professor of economics and senior associate of the Center...
A nation isn’t harmed when it imports more than it exports, which is why the trade deficit is the most dangerous statistic collected by government.
On Tuesday, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning Washington think tank, published a full-page ad in The New York Times condemning the proposed Bush tax cuts. This pro-tax statement is signed by more than 400 economists, including 10 Nobel laureates...
Upset with President Bush’s tax cut plan, columnist Molly Ivins warns that America’s more well-to-do taxpayers might go out and doing something unproductive if the government seizes a smaller portion of their incomes. “There’s no...
The familiar chorus of “tax cuts for the rich” has begun to ring out across the political landscape, in the wake of President Bush’s proposals to boost the economy. The time is long overdue to expose some of the fallacies folded up inside that...
As legend has it, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan was once a member of Ayn Rand’s 1960’s salon. He was an invited guest at Rand’s apartment and apparently was close enough to have read her epic Atlas Shrugged as it came off her typewriter....
While Senator Barbara Boxer is trying to get the federal government to declare more than two million acres in California off-limits to development, California’s other Senator, Diane Feinstein, has already brokered a deal that takes 16,500 acres off-limits....
In The New York Times of October 11th , right next to the article on the latest Nobel Prize winners in economics, is another titled Expansive Role for Greenspan Brings Out Critics of Fed’s Chief. The article recounts how Alan Greenspan has been called upon (and...
The economic and foreign policies of governments — for good or ill — exert a dramatic influence on investors’ portfolios. If that isn’t obvious by now, given the policies of the past two years, it will never be so. In economic policy...
Nearly half a century ago the popular economist John Maynard Keynes wrote, “Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air,...
Over the past couple of years, events like the Internet and more recently, the Enron and Global Crossing debacles, have spurred people to reconsider the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, “EMH.” For those unfamiliar with EMH, here’s a brief textbook...
We are all familiar with pundits from all corners decrying our dependence on foreign oil. Before the oil embargo in the 70’s and subsequent attempts to wean ourselves from OPEC, we were importing about 25% of our oil and now we are importing over 50%. This is...
Is deficit spending “a potent recession cure when administered properly”? A newspaper business writer made this assertion in an article entitled “The Budget Deficit Faced by Many States.” But is it true, that it’s a good thing when...
Other than being rich and famous, what do David Rockefeller, Ted Turner, Sam Donaldson and Scottie Pippen have in common? They all feed at the public trough. More precisely, they collect subsidies from the federal farm program, as do at least 14 members of Congress....
To know what economics is, we must first know what an economy is. Perhaps most of us think of an economy as a system for the production and distribution of the goods and services we use in everyday life. That is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough....
Reporting their findings in the February 2001 Applied Economics Letters — a British professional journal — Professors Franklin G. Mixon Jr. and Kamal P. Upadhyaya rank economics departments in the U.S. South. The rankings are based upon faculty research...
National emergencies are notorious for giving free reign to bad economics. In the panic of a crisis, people grasp desperately for solutions. And thanks to generations of bad economics education, they are offered a wide range of economic errors to grasp at. The most...
Among the suggestions being made for getting the American economy moving up again is a reduction in the capital gains tax. But any such suggestion makes people on the left go ballistic. It is “trickle down” economics, they cry. Liberals claim that those...
To know what economics is, we must first know what an economy is. Perhaps most of us think of an economy as a system for the production and distribution of the goods and services we use in everyday life. That is true as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough....
Dr. Thomas Sowell has just released his latest treasure — it’s title is “Basic Economics.” Reading through the book reminded me of a 30-plus-year-old conversation I had with Professor Armen Alchian, one of my tenacious mentors during my...
The Federal Reserve Board’s recent decision to put downward pressure on interest rates has temporarily quieted those who claimed George W. Bush was exaggerating the possibility of an economic downturn solely to boost his tax cut plan. Many critics, however,...
One of the reasons for the confusion surrounding so many economic issues — such as the current electricity crisis in California — is an underlying confusion about what economics itself is all about. To many people, economics is about money. But economies...
Rather than my usual fall schedule of teaching in the Economics Department at George Mason University, I taught “The Economic Foundations of Legal Studies” at the university’s School of Law to first-year law students. Economics is no stranger at...
Crane hunting is the craze for foreign investors traveling in China. Seemingly every morning an American wakes up bright and early in his five star hotel built in the coastal cities expressly for the purpose of pampering foreign investors with expense accounts. He...
Keynesians continue to peddle their snake oil because the real function of their “economics” is to justify Big Government and the redistribution of income.
George W. Bush might lose this election — not to Al Gore but, paradoxically, to the Reagan Economy. At Willoughby South High School in Ohio, Dick Cheney, the Republican vice presidential nominee, explained why when he declared that the good economy Americans are...
The consumers of computer software need the freedom of Bill Gates and Microsoft to produce and innovate in any branch of computer software they choose.
Government should uphold and enforce market contracts–not violate freedom of contract by dictating the terms, changing the terms, or abrogating the terms of contracts
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