There’s a reason why, in times of war, countries have blockaded others.
We don’t have to have to be like Brady and have an absolute advantage to profit.
“The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.” — Adam Smith
The work you do probably does not produce something you could consume. Even more striking is the fact that almost everything you consume is something you could not possibly produce. Your daily life depends on the cooperation of hundreds of millions of other people.
Homo economicus got its start way back when two humans decided to trade. The rest was history.
The presidential campaign has brought up several economic issues, and international trade has been front and center of the debate. So, as I look at my Donald Trump tie that was made in China and my Donald Trump shirts that were made in Bangladesh and Indonesia, I want to clarify some basic economic concepts dealing […]
Does the “Made in Bangladesh” tag on your shirt—which could just as easily be read as “Made by Child Labor”—make you feel bad? There’s no question it should make us reflect on the incredible standard of living that we enjoy. But as Texas Tech Professor Benjamin Powell explains, we shouldn’t feel bad or unethical for […]
Maybe you’ve heard this slogan: “we can’t get rich doing one another’s laundry.” It’s a sneer at low-skill jobs in the service sector and it is sometimes used to persuade governments to give special privileges to those who practice macho arts like manufacturing lest we be reduced to a nation of shopkeepers, or worse, dry […]
With presidential contenders like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders making a fuss about foreign laborers coming to the country and depressing wages or murdering our women and children immigration reform has once again moved to the front lines of presidential politics. Have you ever wanted to cut through the demagoguery and fear-mongering and get plain […]