It Just Ain’t So

Disaster Response Restores Confidence in Government?

In a memorable episode of the cult-classic cartoon series “The Tick,” the title character is seen in the local café regaling fellow superheroes with his latest adventure, in which he single-handedly stopped an alien plot that would have sucked the earth into a black hole. Skeptical, one of the other heroes responds, “Can you prove [...]

4Jan2012 | Tyler Watts | 0 comments | Continued

Keynesianism Doesn’t Mean Bigger Government?

The debate over what John Maynard Keynes “really” meant by the theories he put forward in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money has been going on almost since it was published in 1936. The release of the second Hayek-Keynes hip-hop video brought this debate back to a boil. For example, in a May [...]

30Nov2011 | Steven Horwitz | 4 comments | Continued

More Government Action Needed for Job Recovery?

Would it come as a shock to hear one of the best-known apologists for government intervention in the economy admitting that it hasn’t worked (so far)? This is exactly what Nobel Prize-winning economist and uber-Keynesian Paul Krugman does in a New York Times column, stating, “[W]e are not now and have never been on the [...]

26Oct2011 | Tyler Watts | 1 comment | Continued

Growing Government Ensures “National Greatness”?

There is widespread belief among politicians, public officials, and pundits that if government doesn’t give us the seeds, nothing will grow. A friend of mine served on our city’s legislative council for eight years. During that time he often heard—in defense of tax-funded business incentives—“If we don’t do something, nothing will happen.” The same belief [...]

21Sep2011 | Arthur E. Foulkes | 6 comments | Continued

Drug Decriminalization Has Failed?

Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and now a columnist for the Washington Post, has denounced libertarianism as “morally empty,” “anti-government,” “a scandal,” “an idealism that strangles mercy,” guilty of “selfishness,” “rigid ideology,” and “rigorous ideological coldness.” (He’s starting to repeat himself.) In his May 9 column, “Ron Paul’s Land of Second-Rate [...]

24Aug2011 | David Boaz | 7 comments | Continued

Anti-Interventionism Is Cold Indifference?

Presidents frequently garner applause when they go to war. Violence as a knee-jerk response to a crisis—do anything, but do something!—is surprisingly popular. Pundits doubtless expect that they too will reap acclaim for urging action, whether or not it’s well considered. Who wants to be thought of as a bump on a log, after all? [...]

22Jun2011 | Gary Chartier | 3 comments | Continued

We Need to Build Society for “Shared Prosperity”?

In a recent New York Times column (“Degrees and Dollars,” March 6), economist Paul Krugman surprisingly had an “it just ain’t so” moment of his own, taking issue with the widely accepted but erroneous idea that more education is the key to increasing prosperity. While he was right about that, his conclusion that technological changes [...]

25May2011 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

America’s Greatness Requires War and Taxes?

New York Times columnist David Brooks thinks America is great but in trouble, and he wants to take steps to preserve American preeminence. He’s right, though not in the way he thinks. In his November 11, 2010, column Brooks argued that we need some sort of National Greatness Agenda; the problem is that his conception [...]

21Apr2011 | Aeon J. Skoble | 1 comment | Continued

Central Banking Beats Free Banking?

In “More Bits on Whether We Need a Fed,” a November 21 Marginal Revolution blog post, George Mason University economics professor Tyler Cowen questions “why free banking would offer an advantage over post-WWII central banking (combined with FDIC and paper money).” He adds, “That’s long been the weak spot of the anti-Fed case.” Free banking [...]

23Mar2011 | Fred E. Foldvary | 3 comments | Continued

The TSA Makes Us Safer?

We both have contributed to the debate about the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) since the furor erupted over the new “enhanced pat-downs” and backscatter scanners, which some call “porno scanners.” This debate has shown how few are the real defenders of liberty, since even the “liberal” media have lined up with the government. The debate [...]

24Feb2011 | and and Steven Horwitz | 2 comments | Continued

War Would End the Recession?

In his September 28 New York Times blog post, Paul Krugman announced that “economics is not a morality play.” That turn of phrase is his way of defending the idea that in unusual times, such as the sort of deep recession we are in, we can get strange relationships between economic cause and effect. The result [...]

22Dec2010 | Steven Horwitz | 41 comments | Continued

More Income Redistribution Will End the Great Recession?

With increasingly widespread recognition of the failure of Keynesian economic policies, all the Progressives are left with are claims whose acceptance requires a suspension of one’s logical faculties. An excellent example of this is a September 2, 2010, New York Times op-ed by Robert Reich, the Clinton administration secretary of labor and professor of public [...]

24Nov2010 | Ivan Pongracic Jr. | 4 comments | Continued

There’s Too Little Trust in Government?

There is one point on which I can unequivocally agree with E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s, column “Can We Reverse the Tide on Government Distrust?”: “So far, the Obama administration has missed the opportunity to demonstrate . . . how it is changing the way government works. How is its approach to . . . regulations [...]

22Oct2010 | Charles Johnson | 2 comments | Continued

Consumer Spending Drives the Economy?

Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of the economy, and it usually drives growth during economic recoveries.” —“Consumers Give Boost to Economy,” New York Times, May 1 Every quarter, when the government releases its latest GDP figures, we hear the familiar refrain: “What the consumer does is vital for economic growth.” “If the [...]

22Sep2010 | Mark Skousen | 26 comments | Continued

Opposing the Civil Rights Act Means Opposing Civil Rights?

Just after winning his Republican primary in May, Rand Paul got himself into a political pickle over his views on property rights and the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Having reluctantly discussed concerns about antidiscrimination laws with the Louisville Courier-Journal and NPR, Paul made his now-notorious appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show, where Maddow grilled him [...]

25Aug2010 | Charles Johnson | 16 comments | Continued

Federalism Means Carte Blanche for States?

Federalism is an important concept in the political structure of the United States—or at least it is supposed to be. Under the Constitution the national (or as it is now almost invariably called, federal) government was given certain responsibilities. Beyond those limited functions the federal government was not to go. The Tenth Amendment makes the [...]

1Jul2010 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

Social Security Is Moral?

A good many people express incredulity with the consistent free-market, or libertarian, position. They consider opposition to the welfare state as something bizarre, rejection of unlimited democracy as almost un-American, and opposition to things like Social Security as bordering on outright callousness. For this reason it may be of some value to illustrate how a [...]

1Jul2010 | Tibor R. Machan | 3 comments | Continued
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