What’s called the market is simply a collection of millions upon millions of independent decision makers not only in America but around the world.
MARKETS
Economics for the Citizen (Part 8)
Economic theory is broadly applicable. However, a society’s property-rights structure influences how the theory will manifest itself.
AFCM Interviews HSA Bank President Kirk Hoewisch
The year was 1901 and someone in Howards Grove, Wisconsin, observed that the first automobile to appear in town was driven by a man from nearby Sheboygan. A century later, the town is making its mark on another new vehicle–which has the potential to...
Economics for the Citizen (Part 7)
The fact that sellers charge people different prices for what often appear to be similar products is related to a concept known as elasticity of demand,
Economics for the Citizen (Part 6)
Relative price is one price in terms of another price.
Economics for the Citizen (Part 5)
The cost of having or doing something is what had to be given up.
Economics for the Citizen (Part 4)
Specialization is said to occur when people produce more of a commodity than they consume or plan to consume.
Economics for the Citizen (Part 3)
There are four classes of behavior that can be called economic behavior. They are: production, consumption, exchange and specialization.
Economics for the Citizen (Part 2)
Economic theory can’t answer normative questions.
Economics for the Citizen (Part 1)
The first lesson in economic theory is that we live in a world of scarcity.
Good and Bad Economics
Here are a couple of newspaper headlines following Florida’s bout with hurricane disasters: “Storms create lucrative times,” St. Petersburg Times (Sept. 30, 2004), and “Economic growth from hurricanes could outweigh costs,” USA Today...
Public Agencies Take Turn Suing Microsoft
Antitrust settlements are a lot like shark chum–they attract predators instead of staving them off. Consider the case of Microsoft. Microsoft chose to settle an antitrust suit brought by the California class action bar to the tune of $1.1 billion dollars in...
Price Controls, Unemployment, and World Hunger
A recent front-page story in the Wall Street Journal told of rising hunger and malnutrition amid chronic agricultural surpluses in India. India is now exporting wheat, and even donating some to Afghanistan, while malnutrition is a growing problem within India itself....
The Economic Effects of the Minimum Wage
Ladies and gentlemen, it is understandable to want to help out poor families, and toward that end it has been suggested that Congress increase the minimum wage, from the current $5.15 an hour to $6.65 an hour. Well, I have good news and bad news for you. The bad news...
The Moral Bankruptcy of the U.N. Human Rights Commission
The re-election of Sudan to the U.N. Human Rights Commission–chaired by terrorist-sponsoring Libya in 2003–demonstrates once again the total moral bankruptcy of the United Nations. The list of atrocities and violations of human rights in Sudan is endless....
The Economics of the Military Draft
Last year, Sen. Fritz Hollings (D-S.C.) and Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) introduced bills calling for reinstatement of the military draft. A far more descriptive term for the military draft is government confiscation of labor services, but keeping with the spirit of...
The Future of Work
A front page article in the WSJ (“The Future of Jobs”, 4/2/04) made a very interesting point: “‘If you can describe a job precisely, or write rules for doing it, it’s unlikely to survive. Either we’ll program a computer to do it, or...
Free Trade vs. The Folly of Protectionism
Protectionism fully implemented across all industries would mean a lower standard of living, because it would result in capital and labor unnecessarily being diverted into the production of goods that could more economically be produced elsewhere.
Education and Capitalism: How Overcoming Our Fear of Markets and Economics Can Improve America’s Schools
Although government schools maintain a monopoly on public funds, they’ve failed miserably by almost every conceivable benchmark.
Capitalism and (Microsoft’s) Freedom
According to Kenneth W. Starr in his Feb. 19 Washington Times Op-Ed column, “A stitch in crime,” the Microsoft antitrust settlement contains loopholes that allow Microsoft to avoid competing in the marketplace on the merits. Yet rather than attack...
Housing Hurdles: The Solution?
Once, after giving a talk, I was confronted by a lady in the audience who asked what some people regard as the ultimate question: “What is YOUR solution?” “There are no solutions,” I said. “There are only trade-offs.” “The...
The Anti-Free Trader’s True Enemy
There’s the “Free Trade but Fair Trade” crowd, and the “Level Playing Field” crowd, and the “America First” crowd, all calling for tariffs and other international trade restrictions. Their supposed adversary is corporate...
Housing Hurdles in California
A new study shows that you need an income of about $104,000 to buy an average home on the San Francisco peninsula with a 20 percent down payment. Since the average price of a home in this area is more than half a million dollars, the 20 percent down payment itself...
The Case for Free Trade
The fear of other people’s intelligence and ability applied to the production of goods we consume is not only profoundly wrong but also extremely dangerous.
Sacrifice, Price-Controls, and Statism vs. Self-Interest , Profit-Seeking, and Freedom
During the gasoline shortage that began in 1979, motorists were often waiting in long lines of cars at filling stations — sometimes for hours — in hopes of reaching the pump before the gas ran out. The ways that Ted Kennedy and Ronald Reagan proposed to...
Government Created Scarcity: California’s “Affordable” Housing Problem
One of the staples of liberal hand-wringing is a need for “affordable housing.” Last year, the standard liberal solution — more government spending — was proposed in a televised speech at the National Press Club in Washington , in a report...
Republicans vs. The Free Market: Tariffs and Trade Restrictions on Imports
On Nov. 18, the Bush administration announced a decision to impose new trade restrictions on imports of some Chinese textiles. Although rationalized as a means of saving American manufacturing jobs, no trade expert thinks it will have more than a trivial effect in...
Persecution of Microsoft is Immoral
The government’s persecution of Microsoft continues unabated. The U.S. appeals court is now considering whether the Bush administration and 19 states negotiated an adequate settlement in their antitrust case against Microsoft. It’s time for the American...
Why Racists and Unions Support Minimum Wages
History has seen many calls for minimum wages for the same reason — to eliminate competition with workers who’d work for less.
Great Myths About the Great Depression
They say “truth will out” but sometimes it takes a long time. For more than half a century, it has been a “well-known fact” that President Franklin D. Roosevelt got us out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. That view was never pervasive...
Real Estate: Dangers of Homeowner’s Associations
I have warned many times of the dangers of homeowner’s associations (HOA’s). As I speak around the nation on the subject of “Sustainable Development,” an environmental term intended to disguise the elimination of property rights, inevitably...
In Defense of Supply-Side Economics
In a recent column, I defended supply-side economics from an attack by Princeton economist Paul Krugman in the New York Times Magazine. One of the rare civil criticisms I got came from my friends at TAPPED, the web log of the liberal American Prospect magazine. Their...
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