Archive for Walter E. Williams
Walter Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University.
Rule of Law versus Legislative Orders
Webster’s dictionary defines law as all the rules of conduct established and enforced by the authority, legislation, or custom of a given community or group. Why are there laws in the first place? The most apparent answer is, were there not a particular law, some people would not conduct themselves according to the law in [...]
23Oct2009 | Walter E. Williams | 1 comment | ContinuedSchool Choice
The overall quality of primary and secondary education received by white students is nothing to write home about. The very fact that 30 percent of college freshmen require remedial education, at a cost of over $2 billion, is pretty good evidence that there is widespread fraud in the conferring of high-school diplomas. That level of [...]
17Jun2009 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedWhere Does Your Vote Really Count?
To encourage us to participate in the political process, we are told that every vote counts. That is true if one is adding up the total votes, but what is the likelihood of any one person’s vote affecting the outcome of a presidential election? Simply put, it is equal to the probability that the person’s [...]
1Apr2009 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | Continued
Fuzzy Thinking
George Orwell warned, “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” That is the challenge—not allowing language and ill-defined terms to corrupt thought—that I face teaching economics to both graduate and undergraduate students. Terms that are widely used can have considerable emotional worth but little or no analytical value, ambiguous meaning, or unappreciated [...]
1Dec2008 | Walter E. Williams | 9 comments | ContinuedUnpleasant Economists
Economists are not the most pleasant people to have around when others are delightfully praising the benefits of this or that public policy. We acknowledge the existence of scarcity, the fact that to enjoy more of one thing requires having less of another, which in turn forces us into bringing up the unpleasant topic of [...]
1Sep2008 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Pursuit of Happiness ~ Rights Versus Wishes
Walter Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University.
Critics of the U.S. health-care system often suggest that we should adopt the single-payer universal systems of other countries. The serious problems encountered by those systems are increasingly documented and well known, such as the long waiting lists, [...]
Economics and Property Rights
Economic theory does not operate in a vacuum. Institutions, such as the property-rights structure, do not change economic theory but influence how the theory manifests itself. Similarly, the law of gravity is not repealed when a parachutist floats gently down to earth. The parachute simply determines how the law of gravity manifests itself. Failure to [...]
1Jan2008 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Pursuit of Happiness: The Intellectual Defense of Liberty
All too often defenders of free-market capitalism base their defense on the demonstration that free markets allocate resources more efficiently and hence lead to greater wealth than socialism and other forms of statism. While that is true, as Professor Milton Friedman frequently pointed out, economic efficiency and greater wealth should be seen and praised as [...]
1Oct2007 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedMinimum Wage, Maximum Folly
Walter Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University .
The big Associated Press story for last October 11 was that “More than 650 economists, including five winners of the Nobel Prize for economics, called Wednesday for an increase in the minimum wage, saying the value of the last increase, [...]
Economics for the Citizen: Part V
We’re all grossly ignorant about most things that we use and encounter in our daily lives, but each of us is knowledgeable about tiny, relatively inconsequential things. For example, a baker might be the best baker in town, but he’s grossly ignorant about virtually all the inputs that allow him to be the best baker. [...]
1Aug2006 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedEconomics for the Citizen, Part III
Someone might have made you a gift of The Freeman.
Does that mean reading this article is free?
The answer is a big fat no.
The Pursuit of Happiness – Economics for the Citizen
For the first time in 37 years, last fall semester I didn’t teach. No, I haven’t retired. It was my semester-off reward for two terms as department chairman at George Mason University. A break is well deserved after a chairmanship––a job not unlike that of herding cats.
During fall semesters I typically teach our first-year Ph.D. [...]
The Pursuit of Happiness ~ Honesty and Trust
Walter Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University.
Several decades ago I used to enjoy an occasional lunch with the late Professor G. Warren Nutter, a distinguished economist who taught at the University of Virginia. Professor Nutter had considerable expertise in comparative economic systems, particularly that of the former [...]
Parting Company Is an Option
My last essay in The Freeman, “How Did We Get Here?” (March), provided clear evidence that Congress and the White House, as well as the courts, had vastly exceeded powers delegated to them by our Constitution. To have an appreciation for the magnitude of the usurpation, one need only read Federalist 45, where James Madison, [...]
1Jun2004 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | Continued-
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Book Reviews
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Montessori, Dewey and Capitalism: Educational Theory for a Free Market In Education
By Jerry Kirkpatrick
