Thanks to the folks at the Mises Institute, Professor George Selgin of the University of Georgia (!) has a superb presentation on the failings of the Federal Reserve. George was one of my professors at George Mason University back in the 1980s and is one of the…
Daily Analysis
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…
Wages Should Be Determined by Markets, not Quota-Driven Bureaucrats
Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute decimates the bean-counting feminist “paycheck fairness” legislation being considered by the Senate. Republicans presumably know this is a bad idea, but one can only wonder whether they will do the right…
Another Measure of American Decline
I don’t know if this is hope or change, but the United States fell from 2nd to 9th in the Forbes index of “Best Countries for Business.” Denmark is first, which may be a surprise, but the Scandinavian country is very free market other than fiscal policy. Hong Kong,…
Labor Day, Unions, and the Role of Government
In a free society, people obviously should be free to join unions and companies should be free to negotiate with unions. But that also means that companies should be free to resist union demands and hire non-union workers. There is no right or wrong in these battles,…
A Basic – but Critical – Economics Lesson from Walter Williams
Just because something is free, that doesn’t mean there is no cost. This is the core message of Walter Williams’ column, which uses the example of “employer-paid” Social Security taxes to explain how politicians specialize in giving us very expensive things for…
Get the Government Out of the Business of Embryonic Stem-Cell Research
As is so often the case, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe hits the nail on the head, asking why taxpayers should be forced to fund embryonic stem-cell research. The moral issues in this debate are very important, to be sure, but Jacoby’s column takes a different…
Should the FDA Get More Power after Salmonella Egg Scare?
Steve Chapman of the Chicago Tribune makes several excellent points in his column on the recent salmonella scare, commenting on the absurd tendency to reward government bureaucracies that screw up. But more important, he explains that there are very strong incentives…
Don’t Be Afraid of the Chinese Economic Tiger
The news that China has surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy has generated a lot of attention. It shouldn’t. There are roughly 10 times as many people in China as there are in Japan, so the fact that total gross domestic product in China is now bigger…
The Private Sector Always Does a Better Job than Government
Using road management as an example, John Stossel explains that government does a worse job than the private sector, even at things that theoretically are a government responsibility. Part of this is because of the profit motive, to be sure, but a big reason is…