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 […]
I use a lot of books in my line of work. I can get a lot of them from the library. I use Amazon’s Kindle app to download a lot of books and organize my notes on them. Some books—like F.A. Hayek’s Individualism and Economic Order—are available for $0 download or on a website like […]
In this previous post I wrote that “[t]here is yet a deeper economic fallacy that infects Mr. Krugman’s recent defense of mercantilism – a problem that I hope to blog on soon.” What follows is that promised blog post. Mr. Krugman’s most-recent defense of mercantilism boils down to the assertion that the case for free trade […]
Mr. Sanders: In last-night’s debate you said: “I was on a picket line in the early 1990s against Nafta, because you didn’t need a Ph.D. in economics to understand that American workers should not be forced to compete against people in Mexico making 25 cents an hour.” I’m told that you’re a principled man who […]
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 […]
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” […]
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 […]
Over at Cafe Hayek, Professor Don Boudreaux has outlined an objection (or addition, really) to our recent Learn Liberty video with Peter Jaworski: War Sucks, What Is It Good For? He writes: “Countries whose peoples trade extensively with each other are less likely to go to war with each other not only because people in […]
As the holiday season begins, you might be getting a lot of emails about Black Friday sales. Over time, the store openings for many retailers on Black Friday has been getting earlier and earlier, even to the point of stores opening on Thanksgiving. Check out the chart below for opening hours over time for some […]
Senator Bernie Sanders isn’t the only one saying it—today you can’t go very long without hearing about how “the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer.” But is that really true? Chelsea German over at HumanProgress.org says “no”: “Senator Sanders is half right: the rich are getting richer. However, his assertion that […]