Here’s a new video, less than 2-1/2 minutes, pointing out some of the key differences between rich nations and poor nations. Not surprisingly, small government, free markets, and sound institutions are critical. I narrated a similar video, released more than two years ago, that makes similar points. The production values are not as high, but […]

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 because it promotes bigger government with its anti-tax competition campaign. And I don’t […]

The Economist magazine has a couple of good articles about Australia’s increasingly enviable economic status. Here’s a blurb from the first article, which outlines the pro-market reforms that enabled today’s prosperity. Only a dozen economies are bigger, and only six nations are richer—of which Switzerland alone has even a third as many people. Australia is […]

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 rich. Argentina has enjoyed a bit of growth. Venezuela, […]

Having just done a blog post where I explained that government should stay neutral in fights between labor and management in the private sector, let’s look at a real-world example to understand why. The millionaire owners and millionaire players from the National Football League are locked in a labor dispute. This is somewhat understandable since […]

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P) has selected the winners of its first annual free market video contest. The contest seeks to identify, encourage, and reward the “new media” policy entrepreneurs with the most compelling messages for liberty.

Ronald Reagan would have been 100 years old on February 6, so let’s celebrate his life by comparing the success of his pro-market policies with the failure of Barack Obama’s policies (which are basically a continuation of George W. Bush’s policies, so this is not a partisan jab). The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis has […]

I prefer the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World over the Heritage/WSJ Index of Economic Freedom, not because I’m an expert on the methodology of the two publications, but for the simple reason that I assume Economic Freedom of the World must be slightly more accurate because, unlike the Heritage Index,  it showed the […]

The world is a laboratory and different nations are public policy experiments. Not surprisingly, the evidence from these experiments is that nations with more freedom tend to grow faster and enjoy more prosperity. Nations with big governments, by contrast, are more likely to suffer from stagnation. The same thing happens inside the United States. The […]

The South Los Angelos City Council is not satisfied with the culinary choices of the people of South Los Angelos. While consumers have been voting one way with their wallets, the City Council has voted to use government force to override their preferences. How many fast food eateries does one area really need? The Los […]