From The Atlantic’s Marian Tupy: Let us start at the well of the socialist renewal, the Vermont senator. Sanders, as everyone knows, calls himself a “democratic socialist.” The word “democratic” is fundamental here, because historically socialism has not, typically, come about as a result of free and fair elections. In most socialist countries, like the […]
Another election year, another debate over the future America’s health care system. Though some of us may have thought we put this debate behind us with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, it has reared its ugly head again. For good reason. Health care costs in America are ballooning much faster than inflation, and […]
“Is Now the Time to Kill the $100 Bill?” That’s the title of a Wednesday, February 17 article in the Wall Street Journal, prompted in part by a blog post from former Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence H. Summers.The article states that the Treasury Department has no current plans to eliminate the $100 bill, so […]
Nobody likes taxes. But not all taxes are equally bad. From a moral perspective, some taxes are more unjust than others – imposing costs, for instance, on precisely those people who are least able to afford them. And from an economic perspective, some taxes are more inefficient than others, distorting economic activity by discouraging work […]
Now that we’ve had eight years to digest the most recent financial crisis, the accepted narrative puts the blame squarely on the private banking sector. The conventional wisdom goes that the greedy banksters on Wall Street – not regulated thoroughly enough – took some risky bets on sub-prime mortgages and collapsed the housing market. It’s […]
This post by Professor Steve Horwtiz originally appeared on the Foundation for Economic Education’s blog back in November of 2015. The following are excerpts. What Menger and others argued was that value is subjective. That is, the value of a good is not determined by the physical inputs, including labor, that helped to create it. […]
Professor Donald Boudreaux has an excellent piece over at Cafe Hayek, where he rebuts a common argument he’s been hearing lately in support of Donald Trump: Trump has proven time and again he knows his stuff when it comes to economics. He has a personal wealth of $10Billion proving his understanding. Hard to argue with […]
Is it unjust that some people receive a good education because they live in a good neighborhood, while those in poor neighborhoods are sent to failing schools? “School choice” is a means to break free from the restrictive location-based public school system, giving parents the freedom to choose the school that is right for their […]
Capitalism is frequently misrepresented on the news, on social media, and in numerous other places. These sources portray the big, evil company as the “dark side”, which is personified by a CEO. In contrast, the “mom and pop” small business owner is heroic – that is, until they become a “big player” and start “exploiting” […]
Big crises raise big questions. And in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, economists are asking billion-dollar macroeconomic questions: What causes market fluctuations? What causes business cycles? In this series of videos, Professor Tyler Cowen vets contenders for the title of “top macroeconomic theory” – Keynesian, Austrian, and Monetarist, and Real Business Cycle […]
What a difference just five years will make. The U.S. national debt reached $19 trillion. How can we grasp such an unfathomable number? Here at Learn Liberty, we’ve been trying to answer that question for years. In fact, our very first video attempted to contextualize the size of the then $14 trillion debt. With help […]
Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson was written by Henry Hazlitt and first published 70 years ago, in 1946. The book is based on Frederic Bastiat’s famous essay, “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen,” and details a number of economic fallacies. The whole book is available to read for free online, thanks to […]
Why does your iPhone cost $200.00? Why is the price of gas so volatile? What gives Uber the right to enact “surge pricing”? It’s easy to think of prices and profit as symbols of greed and corporate power, but prices are really just bits of compressed information that save you time and effort! What do […]
Somewhere along about 2005 I started hearing about “Peak _____,” where the blank is some resource such as oil, water, food, and so on. The pique about “Peak” was based on the notion that “we” (and I’m not sure what that means) had reached the point of maximum production, and that the future was a […]
The following appeared on Professor Don Boudreaux’s blog Cafe Hayek on January 24th, 2016. The following is an excerpt. Be sure to head over to his blog to check out the whole piece packed full of economic wisdom. In The Road to Serfdom,* F.A. Hayek makes an elaborate and important point that is summarized nicely, I […]
In addition to being an anarchist, economist, and son of Milton Friedman, David Friedman is a fan of Recreational Medievalism. Recreational Medievalism includes a range of activities, which can include historical recreation like that of the Society for the Creative Anachronism and cooking recipes from medieval Europe. You can learn more on David Friedman’s website
Milton the rancher lives downriver from a large chemical factory. In the past month, the chemical factory has been disposing of chemical waste in the river, which has flowed downstream and poisoned Milton’s cattle. Milton is also a libertarian-minded person and prefers to keep government out of his life and out of the lives of […]
The term “invisible hand” is a metaphor coined by Adam Smith to describe unintended social benefits resulting from individual actions. The term first appeared in Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, written in 1759. You can read the Theory of Moral Sentiments online here, or check out Learn Liberty’s video on the topic below:
The Congressional Budget Office announced last week that the growth of the federal budget deficit will outpace the growth of the economy in 2016 for the first time since 2009. The drag this places on economic growth is hard to overstate, but what can be done to solve this problem for the future? Harvard University’s […]
If you follow the news, you’ve probably seen plenty of coverage on ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act. Even if you don’t follow the news, it’s hard to go for more than a few days without hearing someone mention their insurance premiums, high cost of care, or some other frustration with health care. All the […]
The following is an excerpt from Matt Zwolinski’s blog post over at Libertarianism.org on the life and thought of radical abolitionist, anarchist, entrepreneur, advocate of women’s suffrage and libertarian Lysander Spooner. Spooner wrote about a variety of topics – from slavery to intellectual property to his own proposed system of free banking. And of course […]
Among my favorite observations made by Thomas Sowell is his insistence that in economic reality human beings confront, not the possibility of solutions to problems but, instead, only trade-offs. We can have more of this good, but only at the cost of having less of that good. T.A.N.S.T.A.A.F.L. Such is economic reality. A frustration suffered […]
Is a $15 minimum wage a free lunch? George Mason University Professor Don Boudreaux says no. In the brand new video below, he points out that minimum wage hikes may sound good in on their face, but in reality they result in job loss because they increase the cost of labor, making low-skilled employees more […]
In just under two weeks the U.S. Congress will vote on whether or not to grant the Office of the Comptroller General of the United States the power to conduct an audit of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet. The Federal Reserve and the conduct of its monetary policy has grown under increased scrutiny over the […]