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Feature Article #1

FDR’s Lucky Timing

On his New York Times blog page, Paul Krugman displayed a graph showing that the post-1929 U.S. economy began to expand before Franklin Roosevelt took office. Certainly the economy was recovering before... Read more

Jim Powell | July/August 2009 | Continued

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Feature Article #2

What is Seen and What is Unseen: Government “Job Creation”

Barack Obama says his roughly $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan could save or create between three and four million American jobs by 2010. Many of these proposed jobs—building or repairing... Read more

Larissa Price | July/August 2009 | Continued

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Feature Article #3

Dim Bulbs

“Hell, there are no rules here—we’re trying to accomplish something.” —Thomas A. Edison Edison’s words may have been true in the 1800s. Today, however, we have plenty of rules, thanks to the... Read more

Michael Heberling | July/August 2009 | Continued

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Feature Article #4

In Praise of Tax Havens

“The proprietor of stock is properly a citizen of the world, and is not necessarily attached to any particular country. He would be apt to abandon the country in which he was exposed to a vexatious inquisition,... Read more

Daniel Mitchell | July/August 2009 | Continued

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Feature Article #5

From Good Samaritan to Robin Hood

Unjust forms of accumulating wealth have always been open to, and practiced by, human beings, but progress depends on the restraints placed on this type of money-making. If six billion people can be fed... Read more

Carlos Rodríguez Braun | July/August 2009 | Continued

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Feature Article #6

The American Land Question

In 1934 in the depths of the Great Depression, Southern agrarian (and historian) Frank Owsley called for an American land reform. He suggested that “unemployed or underemployed families be staked to... Read more

Joseph R. Stromberg | July/August 2009 | Continued

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Feature Article #7

Keynes’s Ghost

Underlying the belief that increased government spending can stimulate the economy is the “expenditure multiplier” theory formalized by Richard Kahn in 1931 and later enshrined in modern macroeconomic... Read more

James C. W. Ahiakpor | July/August 2009 | Continued

About this Site

The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, is the flagship publication of the Foundation for Economic Education and one of the oldest and most respected journals of liberty in America. For almost 50 years it has uncompromisingly defended the ideals of the free society.

Through its articles, commentaries and book reviews, several generations of Americans have also learned [...]

Columns

post thumbnail Ideas and Consequences

Give Up? Are You Kidding?

These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and... Read more

July/August 2009 | Lawrence W. Reed | 2 comments | Continued
post thumbnail Peripatetics

What The Drug Warriors Have Given Us

Violence among Mexico’s drug cartels and government has spilled over the U.S. border and beyond. The New York Times reports, “In the past few years, the cartels and other drug trafficking organizations... Read more

July/August 2009 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | Continued
post thumbnail The Therapeutic State

The Shame of Medicine: The Depravity of Psychiatry

Responding to my May 2009 column, George Mason University economics professor Bryan Caplan commented: “In the last couple of decades, a lot of  people have apologized for the past crimes of the groups... Read more

July/August 2009 | Thomas Szasz | 5 comments | Continued
post thumbnail Give Me a Break!

The Fatal Conceit

Sure, the economy is in bad shape—though the late ’70s and early ’80s were worse in many ways. But is it true that every economist agrees that massive “stimulus” is the solution? “A failure... Read more

July/August 2009 | John Stossel | 6 comments | Continued

Departments

post thumbnail Perspective

Bad Regulation Drives Out Good

In 1969 economist Harold Demsetz identified a flaw in much public policy analysis, the “Nirvana Fallacy”: “The view that now pervades much public policy economics implicitly presents the relevant... Read more

July/August 2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | Continued
post thumbnail It Just Ain't So

Government Must Keep Track of Derivatives?

In a surprising Wall Street Journal op-ed, property-rights advocate Hernando de Soto writes that our current financial woes resulted from government’s failure to keep tabs on the derivatives market.... Read more

July/August 2009 | Robert P. Murphy | 1 comment | Continued
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