The title of this post may be a slight exaggeration. I actually recommend you read the entire two-page paper by Devon Herrick of the National Center for Policy Analysis. But this chart from that study is an excellent visual display of what’s wrong with the health care system. You can see that the price of […]

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 world’s experts on competing currencies. This video is […]

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 this new research. What can we conclude about the effect of various policies on economic growth? […]

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation is announcing a free market video contest, with a grand prize of $1,000 available for the video that best promotes free markets, limited government, and individual liberty. CF&P specifically encourages students to participate, but entries from individuals of any age will be accepted.

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 thing and block this initiative that at best will be a boon for trial lawyers and […]

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, meanwhile, enjoyed the biggest increase. The […]

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, just as there is no right or wrong when McDonald’s […]

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 “free.” Scarcity means there’s no free lunch. Having more of one thing requires […]

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 approach and uses economic arguments to thoroughly debunk those […]

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 for safety in an unfettered marketplace. The fundamental issue, though, is that there is […]