Clik here to view.
The Case for Abolishing Minimum Wage Laws
Eighteen states impose minimum wages higher than the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour. Among the states, California’s $12 an hour minimum is currently the highest (the minimum wage in the District of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Two Ways to Improve Political Discourse on Guns
Presidential hopeful Andrew Yang broke down in tears last week while discussing gun violence at a town hall in Iowa. Elizabeth Warren announced that she intends to reduce gun violence in this country...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bernie Sanders Is Right on Criminal Justice Reform—and He's in the Perfect...
Bernie Sanders has had more than his share of bad ideas over the years (see: socialism). But in his recently released proposal, Justice and Safety for All, the junior senator from Vermont offers an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Cobra Effect: Lessons in Unintended Consequences
Every human decision brings with it unintended consequences. Often, they are inconsequential, even funny. When Airbus, for example, wanted to make its planes quieter to improve the flying experience...
View ArticleWe're Bankrupt. Isn't That Worthy of Presidential Discussion?
Midway between the second and third Democratic presidential debates, we should pause to take stock of what we’ve seen. Eight moderators have grilled more than 20 candidates for nine hours on national...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Economics Lessons for Bernie Sanders
It’s hard to tell at this point if Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign is faltering because his ideas have gone from bad to worse or if his ideas are getting worse because his presidential campaign...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Deficit Day 2019 Just Arrived
Every year the Tax Foundation calculates Tax Freedom Day, the hypothetical day on which the average American citizen is done paying taxes for the year. The idea is that starting on January 1, everyone...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pope Francis Owes It to the Poor to Be More Informed about Markets
Galileo ran afoul of the Inquisition in 1633 when he was found "vehemently suspect of heresy." His heresy? Declaring the heliocentric view of the solar system: that the earth revolves around the sun....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Transferism, Not Socialism, Is the Drug Americans Are Hooked On
The United States has never had a meaningful socialist tradition or even a semi-serious socialist party. Socialism in the United States is a fringe movement at best and always has been. This makes the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A New Year’s Resolution for America: Realize That Politics Isn’t the Most...
It’s resolution time. If you’re like most Americans, you’re planning on losing weight and exercising more in 2020. This is that special time of year for pie-in-the-sky planning. You might be planning...
View ArticleClik here to view.
When Ricky Gervais Meets Socrates: A Lesson on the Limits of Knowledge
For a few glorious minutes at the Golden Globes awards ceremony, Ricky Gervais told a roomful of Hollywood stars what the rest of us have been thinking for years: they need to stop preaching to us...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Beware the Incentives of "Forgiving" Student Loan Debt
Reality has a habit of interrupting the stories people tell themselves.The 18th-century philosopher George Berkeley constructed complex arguments to prove that matter doesn’t really exist. In response,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wickard v. Filburn: The Supreme Court Case That Gave the Federal Government...
Every presidential election in the United States follows a clear formula. First, many people with absolutely no chance of winning the presidency declare their candidacies. Those who get washed out of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Forcing Children to Pledge Allegiance Is Undesirable and Unconstitutional. So...
A 16-year-old junior at Lebanon High School in Eastern Pennsylvania is suing his school district in federal court claiming his civil rights have been violated. As is the case across much of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In Dark Times, Human Cooperation Shines Brighter Than Government Coercion
If the outsized reaction to the coronavirus has shown us anything, it is that humanity’s dual instincts of cooperation and coercion are manifest as we grope our way back to regular life. The coercion...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The US Will Never Get Back to Pre-Coronavirus Spending Levels, History...
It just took a couple of weeks for the world to go from business-as-usual to dark-even-for-a-scifi-movie. It wasn’t long ago that people worried about things like doing their jobs, taking classes, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
No Policy Can Save Lives; It Can Only Trade Lives
In times of crisis, politicians want to look like they’re doing something, and don’t want to hear about limits on their authority. In times of crisis, people want someone to do something, and don’t...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Meat Supply Disruptions Are the Bitter Harvest of the “Non-Essential Worker”...
A central theme of our recent book, Cooperation & Coercion, is that all governments are hamstrung when they attempt to fix problems. Policymakers suffer from the knowledge problem: they don’t know...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Massive Inflation May Be Coming, Because the US Government Has Cornered...
The federal government is moving into the final stages of its fiscal life. Deficits have gotten so enormous that the Federal Reserve simply prints the money the government needs. Why? Because that’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
(Un) Happy Deficit Day, America
Even before our nationwide COVID-19 panic attack, we were heading for yet another trillion dollar deficit. Before the dust settled, 30 million Americans had filed for unemployment, those fortunate...
View Article
