Walter Block talks about Economics in One Lesson, perhaps the most approachable book about economics. And, it's a free-market, liberty-friendly, Austrian approach. What could be better?
Posts published in “Economics”
The news from Washington over the past few months — $25 billion here, $700 billion there — is hard to keep track of. The amounts…
The New York Times has a nicely-done interactive timeline of the events since September 7, 2008, when the government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie…
Murray N. Rothbard, in his book For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, wrote a chapter that is highly relevant to the situation we face…
In This Book is So Me, Walter Block introduces a book that I’ve quoted from and used extensively: Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt.…
When the head of a chamber of commerce speaks or writes, it pays to listen or read carefully. While chambers are nominally pro-business, that's a long way from saying they're pro-liberty. Instead, they increasingly exist to serve a narrow interest. Using words and language like "pride," "community," "investment," and "economic development" -- all words that people can agree with, their flowery messages hide their real agenda.
Any editorial that starts with "Karl Marx was right about at least one thing ..." deserves close examination, especially when it appears in Kansas' largest newspaper and is written by that newspaper's former editor. The thrust of Davis Merritt's article is that the theory of free markets hasn't worked: "We're painfully experiencing right now the unraveling of neat free-market theory." (Pragmatism needs to trump ideology, November 18, 2008 Wichita Eagle)
I’m listening to Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, and he says: “Laissez-faire capitalism is a wonderful thing except in this case …” I’ve heard stuff like…
I recently discovered usgovernmentspending.com. It seems like a great place to get data not only for the federal government, but for the states, too.
A post at the Wichita Eagle Editorial blog titled Either way, taxpayers will pay for failing GM illustrates how when government and business become highly…
Here’s a talk recently delivered by Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. This organization remains the best place to learn about why…
Pat Buchanan’s recent column Comrade Obama? contains much I agree with, keeping me liking and admiring him, even through I disagree with a few of…
Making Social Security More Harmful. From the Foundation for Economic Education. "Consider first that ever since Social Security was enacted in 1935 Americans have been told that their 'contributions' are being deposited into their own account to pay for their retirement benefits. ... The other fraudulent claim made about Social Security (again, from the very beginning of the program) is that employees pay only half the cost, with employers paying the other half."
Professor George Reisman contributes the excellent (and lengthy) article The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Present Crisis. I’ve had the distinct honor…
I recommend BeyondBailouts.org as a place to learn about the current situation in our financial markets. From their site: BeyondBailouts.org is a joint venture of…
So says Anna Schwartz. She co-authored, with Milton Friedman, A Monetary History of the United States. She has insight into what's going on right now. Read the Wall Street Journal's Weekend interview Bernanke Is Fighting the Last War.
In a Wichita Eagle letter, writer Prem N. Bajaj of Wichita makes the case that Earmarks are OK. But only by tortured reasoning, in my…
In his column Welcome to ‘Moral Hazard’, Wall Street Journal editorial writer Daniel Henninger writes: For behind it all sat Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,…
Think of it: Nothing is more vital to capitalism than capital, the financial seed corn dedicated to next year's crop. Yet we, believers in free markets, allow the price of capital, i.e., the interest rate on loanable funds, to be fixed by a central committee in accordance with government objectives. We might as well resurrect Gosplan, the old Soviet State Planning Committee, and ask them to draw up the next five-year plan.
The Foundation for Economic Education reports that an American clothes hanger company has succeeded in persuading the government to slap a tariff on its foreign…