Archive for William H. Peterson
The Failure of the New Economics
Dr. Peterson is Distinguished Lundy Professor of Business Philosophy Emeritus at Campbell University, North Carolina. In the beginning was Say’s Law—supply creates demand. But that was the “old economics.” Now, glory be, we’re blessed with the “New Economics”—demand creates supply—thanks to the “new” dazzling 1936 paradigm of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money [...]
1May1996 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedShake-Down: How the Government Screws You From A to Z
Dr. Peterson, an adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation, is Distinguished Lundy Professor Emeritus of Business Philosophy at Campbell University in North Carolina. Item: A federal program routinely subsidizes welfare families living in oceanfront apartments in upscale La Jolla, California. Item: The Food and Drug Administration refuses to approve a machine that gives CPR to [...]
1Apr1996 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedThoughts on FEE’s 50th Anniversary
It is force, not opinion, that queens its way over the world, but it is opinion that looses the force. —Blaise Pascal, 1670 How to get from here to there—from (to supply a current benchmark on massive government) the U.S. $1.7 trillion budget, over to a widespread reaffirmation of the rule of [...]
1Mar1996 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedAmerica’s Other Democracy
Dr. Peterson, Heritage Foundation adjunct scholar, is Distinguished Lundy Professor Emeritus of Business Philosophy at Campbell University in North Carolina, and author of a forthcoming book, Peterson’s Law: Why Things Go Wrong, from which this article is drawn. Leonard Read used to tell the story of a shopper in a crowded department store during the [...]
1Mar1996 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Freedom Revolution
What lifts this book above the pack is extensive use of Armey’s Axioms—witty though incisive truisms on public policy, from a man in a position to know. The author is the House Majority Leader, an architect of the “Contract with America,” a champion of the flat tax, and a former economics professor at the University [...]
1Feb1996 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Simple Rules for a Complex World by Richard A. Epstein
Harvard University Press 1995 375 pages $35.00 America broods over laws and lawyers, as witness: Q. Why didn’t the shark eat the lawyer? A. Professional courtesy. Q. What are 500 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A. A good start. Q. How can a single lawyer in town without enough to do succeed? A. [...]
1Dec1995 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Henry Hazlitt: A Giant of Liberty by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., Jeffrey A. Tucker, and Murray N. Rothbard
Ludwig von Mises Institute • 1994 • 158 pages • $14.95 paperback Last November 28th the occasion of Henry Hazlitt’s 100th birthday was celebrated at a testimonial conference and dinner in New York City. Among those presenting tributes to Hazlitt were Lawrence Kudlow, Joseph Sobran, Llewellyn Rockwell, Bettina Bien Greaves, and yours truly. Why all [...]
1Nov1995 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Free to Try Introduction by Hans F. Sennholz
The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. • 1995 • 156 pages • $14.95 paperback (special price until October 31: $11.95) Where else in America but in law-passing, tax-imposing, and regulation-issuing Washington, D.C., is private success so roundly condemned? And where else is it so punished, especially when it involves entrepreneurship and “the rich”? (A measure [...]
1Oct1995 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedPerspective: The Other Washington
There are two Washingtons. One is in gleaming white, a magnificent sight for the tourist flying into National Airport and catching glimpses of the Capitol Building, White House, Supreme Court Building, Jefferson Memorial, Washington Monument, and so on. The other Washington is one the tourist rarely gets to see. This Washington epitomizes the Welfare State. [...]
1Sep1995 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty by P. J. O’Rourke
Atlantic Monthly Press • 1994 • 362 pages $22.00 • (from Laissez Faire books, $17.95) Quiz time: name the libertarian wit who declared just before the unveiling of the Clinton universal health plan in 1993: "It hasn’t even started yet, and already it’s not working." Give up? He’s America’s heir to the H. L. Mencken [...]
1Jun1995 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Demosclerosis: The Silent Killer of American Government by Jonathan Rauch
Times Books • 1994 • 261 pages • $22.00 Calcification, a kind of spreading dry rot accompanied by a bloating of the body politic, spreads across the American landscape. It’s a disease that saps the strength of the people who, ironically, are the ones who demand more and more from a government that gives them, [...]
1Apr1995 | William H. Peterson | 1 comment | ContinuedBook Review: Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty by James Bovard
St. Martin’s Press • 1994 • 408 pages • $24.95 “The most cogent reason for restricting the interference of government is the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. Every function superadded to those already exercised by the government causes its influence over hopes and fears to be more widely diffused, and converts, more [...]
1Dec1994 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: American Democracy: Aspects of Practical Liberalism by Gottfried Dietze
Johns Hopkins University Press • 303 pages • $39.95 “The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accomplish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common sense of the citizens; the Russian centers all the authority of society in a single arm: the principal instrument of the former is freedom; of the [...]
1Oct1994 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Russian Currency and Finance: A Currency Board Approach to Reform by Steve H. Hanke, Lars Jonung, and Kurt Schuler
Routledge, 1993 • 238 pages • $49.95 cloth (also available from Laissez Faire Books at $21.95) Once upon a time—in 1959—I propounded, in both Challenge and National Review, Peterson’s Law on inflation, as follows: History shows that money will multiply in volume and divide in value over the long run. Or expressed differently, the purchasing [...]
1Sep1994 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedA Free-market University
Dr. Peterson, adjunct scholar at the Heritage Foundation and former Lundy Professor at Campbell University, is this month’s guest editor. He received an honorary degree from UFM in 1991. These days neither the Ivy League nor the Behemoth State Universities—so politically correct, so given to affirmative recruitment of faculty and students, so “Hey-hey ho-ho/Western-Civ’s got-to-go”—display [...]
1Apr1994 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedWhat Is Government Waste?
Dr. Peterson, a Heritage Foundation adjunct scholar, is a contributing editor of The Freeman. Is the “waste tax” a tool for coming to grips with runaway federal spending? The waste tax is a newly advanced idea of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), a non-partisan nonprofit Washington-based educational organization with 500,000 members led by syndicated columnist [...]
1Jan1994 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: Failure and Progress: The Bright Side of the Dismal Science by Dwight R. Lee and Richard B. McKenzie
Cato Institute • 1993 • 180 pages • $19.95 cloth; $10.95 paperback Thomas Robert Malthus prophesied failure for mankind and so did much to inflict the invective of “the dismal science” on economics. In his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus held sexual appetite would constantly tend to propel population beyond production, setting [...]
1Dec1993 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | Continued-
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