A combination of drought, political instability and poor policies is threatening the lives of thousands. Fortunately, for some herders, insurance products are helping to make a desperate situation a little bit better.
The rich get richer, and the poor get … cell phones, cars, and nice TVs? Prof. Mike Munger says we’re actually more equal than ever. Click to watch the full interview.
Should the federal government provide a universal basic income for the states?
I am furious. I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and learned that my friend Steve Horwitz had written almost 3,000 words in a single day in his new book chapter on inequality.
If the problem is that the poor have too few options, it’s a bad “solution” to remove one of those options.
The rapid decline of poverty over the past forty years shows that there has never been more hope for rising incomes among the poor. We can help them best by promoting mobility through economic freedom.
Here’s my opening statement for my Students for Liberty debate with Will Wilkinson. Enjoy. Libertarians have a standard set of fundamental criticisms of the welfare state. Forced charity is unjust. Individuals have a moral right to decide if and when they want to help others. Forced charity is unnecessary. In a free market, voluntary donations […]
What should we do about the fact that some people are able to earn more money than others? Should government redress the resulting disparities in income? The answer is often believed to hinge upon our conclusion about the role of luck in affecting income-earning abilities. Those on the political left emphasize factors beyond the individual’s […]
Last night, millions of movie buffs, entertainment fiends, and celebrity gawkers from across the globe tuned in for the Oscars. While a few of us aficionados waited with bated breath for the announcement of Best Live-Action Short (Timecode was robbed!), for many viewers the awards ceremony isn’t the main event: The red carpet is what […]
Recently, at a Center for Global Development conference, attendees criticized a wide swath of development programs that, these experts say, provide no evidence they are achieving their objectives.
Isn’t a Universal Basic Income just another name for a negative income tax, such as Tax = -$10,000 + .3*Income? If so, isn’t a Universal Basic Income means-tested by definition?
I was initially excited to see that progressive Dean Baker has written a piece on “Eight Market-Oriented Proposals That Reduce Income Inequality” for AEI. It begins promisingly by criticizing overly strict occupational licensing for high-skilled workers. But it then studiously avoids the really big wins. Namely: 1. Immigration. High-skilled immigration reduces conventionally measured inequality by […]
Minimum wage laws were invented to protect the “Anglo-Saxon” race from competition. Prof. Deirdre McCloskey explains the authoritarian roots of Progressivism.
The top or bottom 1/5/10% by income, just like the top or bottom income quintiles, are never the same people from year to year, because there is constant, dynamic turnover as we move up and down the income categories.
Indeed, classical liberals are usually much more concerned with the alleviation of poverty, rather than hand-wringing about who might have a larger slice of an ever-widening pie.
A personal story about Vance’s climb from poor, white Appalachia to a Yale law degree and a white-collar career, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis will make you laugh, cry, and think carefully about the importance of culture for economic wellbeing.
A truly caring society depends on building relationships and community norms.
The minimum wage is often cast as a humanitarian cause… but it’s not: it harms the very people its supporters are fighting for. Professor Don Boudreaux explains the original reason the minimum wage was established, and its impact then and now.
The road to tyranny is paved with good intentions.
Beneath the surface there’s a lot of progress occurring that should make us all feel a little more optimistic about the future.
Cumbersome, top-down aid policies are not agile enough to effectively respond to the diverse needs of our communities.
Local communities have a better understanding of their communities’ needs than far off centralized government anti-poverty directives.
Saturday, September 17th will be the five year anniversary of the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street protests. This week’s links cover the protests and what they did (or didn’t) accomplish. The Lasting Effects of Occupy Wall Street, Five Years Later Throwback: What Reason Saw at Occupy Wall Street Protests What Occupy Wall Street Got […]
How can we actually stimulate economic development in poverty stricken nations? Just about everyone would agree that humanitarians have a worthy goal and that their hearts are in the right place, but can humanitarian aid actually help stimulate economic development? Professor Chris Coyne discusses the key elements needed for an economy to work and how […]