On August 16, the U.S. government will debut of a new type of Consumer Price Index (CPI), one which it says will better reflect true inflation. Unlike the existing CPI, the new index will be subject to
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Money Inflation and Price Inflation
The Reagan administration seemed to have achieved the culmination of its “economic miracle” of the last several years: while the money supply had skyrocketed upward in double digits, the consumer price index remained virtually flat. Money cheap and abundant, stock
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The Poor
Socialists commonly cite the existence of the poor as a reason for socialism, and they claim that their concern for the poor shows compassion and morality. Since the topic of poverty is a key battleground in the
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Buy American!
January 1981 • Volume: 31 • Issue: 1 • The Freeman
Every once in a while, I see a car bearing a bumper sticker, “Buy American.” From what I gather, it is a popular sticker in Michigan, especially
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Collectivism, Climate Change, and Economic Freedom
An individual kills someone – for money, out of jealousy, as an act of revenge, or because he doesn’t like
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Classical Liberalism and Property
Human society is an association of persons for cooperative action. As against the isolated action of individuals, cooperative action on the basis of the principle of the division of labor has the advantage of greater productivity. If a number of
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Markets, Poverty and the Snapshot Fallacy
Scholars such as Matt Ridley, Michael Shermer and Paul Rubin have been warning us about the dangers posed in trying to understand complex adaptive systems by our evolutionarily inherited folk minds, which tend to see the world in linear and
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Mr. Moral Hazard
Originally Published in “The Free Market”
December 1998
Volume 16, Number 12
The phrase of the day is “moral hazard.” It’s something everyone seems to think is a bad thing, but few are willing to do anything about, certainly not Alan
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Insolvency vs. Liquidity, or Austrians vs. Keynesians
An economics debate of very great importance is surfacing. Is the government’s economic rationale for bailing out the banks valid? If it is not, then the entire case for the bank bailouts fails.
On one side of the
