Opinion surveys have indicated that a growing number of young people and their parents are wary of the Army's recruiting pitch at a time when soldiers in Iraq are killed and wounded virtually every day. Spring is typically one of the more difficult periods of the year...
MARKETS
The Freedom To Move as an International Problem
There are extensive tracts of land, comparable to those in Europe, which are sparsely settled. The United States of America and the British dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and so on, are less heavily populated, in comparison with their...
Minimum Wage, Maximum Folly
Senators Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and Rick Santorum, R-Pa., both introduced proposals to increase the minimum wage from its current $5.15 an hour. Sen. Kennedy's proposal would have raised the minimum wage to $7.25 in three steps over 26 months, while Sen. Santorum's...
Dishwasher Economics
With TV cameras in tow, Channel 11 stopped at our restaurant last Tuesday to ask the afternoon kitchen crew how it felt about the new $52 occupation tax. Not surprisingly, no one liked it. Also not surprisingly, not much of the half-hour of filming ended up on TV,...
Bedroom Economics in Germany
Now that unemployment in Germany has hit 11.4 percent, it was perhaps inevitable that some politicians there would come up with various quick-fix "solutions" to the huge drain of unemployment compensation on the government's budget. A young waitress discovered one of...
Economics for the Citizen (Part 10)
A discussion of a few popular sentiments that have high emotional worth but make little economic sense.
Economics for the Citizen (Part 9)
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.
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.
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,
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 revolutionize how...
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 (Sept. 27, 2004). The writers,...
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 software...
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. As Human...
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 we'll teach a foreigner to do it,"...
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.
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