There are lots of things that are important for a good life and a prosperous, well-functioning society, including family and community. But something else that belongs on the list, at least if you want more growth, is individualism. Here’s an excerpt from a new study…
Daily Analysis
Even World Bank Research Shows Economic Liberty Is Better than Government Dependency
Regular readers know that I’m not a big fan of the international bureaucracies. I don’t like the International Monetary Fund because it encourages bad policy by bailing out nations such as Greece. I don’t like the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development…
Unemployment at 9.1 Percent: Heckuva Job on that Stimulus, Mr. President!
Based on this morning’s numbers, I’ve updated my chart showing what the Obama Administration said would happen with the so-called stimulus compared to what actually has happened. As you can see, the unemployment rate is about 2.5 percentage points higher than the…
New Study Shows Government Hindering Job Growth While Unemployment Lingers
It would not surprise most Americans to hear that unemployment rates are still lingering lower than pre-recession levels. As Dennis Cauchon wrote last week in USA Today: The nation has 5% fewer jobs today — a loss of 7 million — than it did when the recession began in…
Just How Many Jobs Can Firing One Bureaucrat Create?
I mentioned the other day a claim from CEI that regulatory burdens cost the economy nearly $2 trillion in 2008. The Phoenix Center also recently produced a policy bulletin examining the costs of the regulatory state (Hat-tip: Big Government). In quantifying the…
In One Chart, Everything You Wanted to Know about the Relationship Between Good Policy and Economic Prosperity
Okay, the title’s an exaggeration, but this chart is rather revealing. It shows how per-capita GDP has changed between 1980 and 2008 in Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela. As you can see, Chile used to be the poorest of the three countries and now it is comparatively…
Visualizing Prosperity
Although not necessarily the intent of this video, the impressive data visualization makes it hard not to see just how profoundly the spread of freedom and capitalism has dramatically improved the lives of billions throughout the world in such an historically short…
Untangling Sherrod’s Keynesian Nonsense
Nancy Pelosi was rightly mocked for her nonsensical assertion that subsidizing unemployment is the best way to stimulate the economy. Unfortunately, as we pointed out at the time, such claims reflect nothing more than standard Keynesian economics as understood by so…
Would You Rather Your Country Grow like France or Hong Kong?
A paper posted on the Social Science Research Network looks at nations that are prospering compared to those that are stagnating. Not surprisingly, limited government and free enterprise policies are associated with better economic performance. Here’s an excerpt from…
Overwhelming Evidence for Less Government Spending
Alberto Alesina of Harvard’s economics department summarizes some of his research in a column for today’s Wall Street Journal. He and a colleague looked at fiscal policy changes in developed nations and found very strong evidence that spending reductions boost growth….