Courses

Gary Galles

Professor of Economics

Pepperdine University

Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. He is the author of The Apostle of Peace: The Radical Mind of Leonard Read.

Blog Posts

Liberty and "social" justice for all is impossible

March 19, 2017
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Role of Government

Recently, Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen wrote in the Washington Post about “The most important phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance”—“with liberty and justice for all.” Allen recognizes that justice requires “equality before the law” and that “freedom is freedom only when it is for everyone.” But she confuses democracy with liberty, which is very different. She also replaces the traditional meaning of justice (“Giving each his own”) with an inconsistent version of “social justice.” And the two primary examples she cites, rights to education and health care, are

No, Unions Don't Increase Everyone's Wages

September 24, 2016
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Free Markets and Capitalism

2016’s edition of Labor Day followed a well-established tradition — unions claiming credit for every worker gain. Among their most common assertions, often incorporated in attributing negative wage trends to eroding union power, was that unions raise all workers’ wages. Unfortunately, unions retard rather than raise others’ real earning power. Unions leverage special government-granted powers (e.g., unique exemptions from antitrust laws) allowing current employees to prevent competition from others willing to do the same work for less. This is a form of collusion that, done by any business,

When Jobs Kill Wealth

September 4, 2016
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Basic Economics

Every Labor Day, political factions battle over how the labor market is doing and what to do about perceived problems. Every fourth Labor Day, that battle is intensified as administrations try to sell the idea that they have been the best of stewards and only their opponents stand in the way of doing even better, while electoral rivals market the opposite message. Those battles include skirmishes about a multitude of measurement issues: whether employment or unemployment measures are more accurate which unemployment measure is the best, reasons for changes in labor force participation part-time