Category: Economics
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Income Inequality
(Updated October 31, 2011) There has been an increasing amount of news lately, particularly surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement, fussing that the gap between the rich and the poor is growing, bemoaning the declining lot of the poor and middle class, and condemning the rapaciousness of the very rich, grabbing all they can while…
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Minimum Wage, Minimum Rights
Minimum wage laws should be abolished. They are morally indefensible because they cause more harm than good. They are economic foolishness because they thwart the price signal that lets workers and employers arrive at the optimal price for labor. First, minimum wage laws increase unemployment. As I argued in a post on unions, it is…
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The Essence of Libertarianism
If I succeed with this post I will convince the reader that there are a narrow set of clear rules that should guide the debate over the appropriateness of any government activity. I claim that those rules are simple and uncontroversial for most Americans. They are rooted in the core of what it means to…
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Moral High Ground for Libertarians
I believe libertarians can make a strong claim for occupying the moral high ground on many issues. Opponents often argue against freedom by claiming that only the rich and powerful will benefit. Quite the opposite is true. I\’m going to start a list of examples starting with: An article by Jagdish Bhagwati who argues that…
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Roger Pilon Explains the Essence of Libertarianism
Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute presented at talk at a Cato event entitled \”The Moral Implications of the Deficit, Debt and the Budget Battles\” on June 9, 2011. His talk was part of a debate with Amatai Etzione that was inspired by Pilon\’s article in the Wall Street Journal. Starting around 30 minutes in…
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Price Controls: Yet another way some seek advantage over others through the government
I just read a great summary on The Freeman Online of the many problems with price controls. It was written in 1978 but is still quite relevant today. I highly recommend it. Congress is currently debating reducing price supports on agriculture so refreshing our memory on the topic is important. It strikes me as ironic…
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Unregulated by Government is Still Well Regulated
Steven Horwitz has a post on the FreemanOnline that is just excellent. It makes the point that a market unregulated by the government is not necessarily an \”unregulated market\” in the sense that nothing governs how it behaves. Rather a market unregulated by the government will then be regulated by the rules of supply and…
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Electronic Currency (e.g., BitCoin) – An End Run Around the Fed?
When I first heard the position that the federal government should get out of the business of providing a currency I thought it sounded like the authors were not quite as connected with reality as one would hope. However, I have been reading and hearing more and more about the general idea and I no…
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Obama’s magic math – can I use that at home?
Today President Obama announced a new plan \”for America\’s energy security, including increased responsible domestic production and winning the future through a clean energy economy.\” I find it puzzling that Obama can claim to be fighting high oil prices by supporting several approaches that all work to increase costs. Obama proposes: 1. More domestic drilling…