Although government schools maintain a monopoly on public funds, they’ve failed miserably by almost every conceivable benchmark.
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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 Microsoft, perhaps...
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 people DEMAND solutions!" she shot back...
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 America, seeking to boost profits by either...
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 deal with...
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 billed as a "new vision."...
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 public to...
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 among economists, and even...
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 someone from the audience...
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...
Sins of Businessmen, Crimes of Politicians
Acts of dishonesty and fraud have no more essential connection to business activity than they do to the practice of medicine or the performance of music or to any of the arts or sciences.
Politics & Ideas: The Battle Over Ideas (Lecture 6, Part 4 of 4)
In contrast, however, the interventionist ideas, the socialist ideas, the inflationist ideas of our time, have been concocted and formalized by writers and professors. And they are taught at colleges and universities. You may say: "Today's situation is much worse." I...
Politics & Ideas: The Rise and Decline of Civilization (Lecture 6, Part 3 of 4)
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...
Politics & Ideas: The Philosophy of Interventionism (Lecture 6, Part 2 of 4)
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,...
Politics & Ideas: The Interdependence of Economics and Politics (Lecture 6, Part 1 of 4)
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...
Why Rent Control is Immoral
Rent controls don’t work, and its advocates know it.
Deflation
What needs to be realized is that there are two distinct causes of generally falling prices. One is the increase in production and supply, which should never, never be confused with deflation, depression, or poverty. The other is a decrease in the quantity of money and or volume of spending in the economic system.
Economics Lesson in a Kit
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. No, these babies...
Deficits, Fiscal Policy, Tax Cuts, and Inflation
Last week's announcement that the federal budget deficit will reach $455 billion this fiscal year (which ends on Sept. 30) brought predictable denunciations from the Democratic side of the aisle. It's not so much that Democrats care about deficits -- after all, they...
Take No Half-Measures in Protecting Doctors from Antitrust
The following text is the June 10th oral testimony of CAC Chairman Nicholas Provenzo before the District of Columbia Council Committee on Consumer and Regulatory Affairs regarding The Physicians Joint Negotiating Act of 2003. Madam chairman, members of the committee,...
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