It Just Ain’t So

Higher Income Taxes Are Benign?

In a recent issue of the online magazine Slate, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer attempts to debunk the alleged myth that higher taxes reduce growth. Spitzer opens with the undeniable truth that the “American debate over taxes is ferocious and highly partisan.” If only he had continued to state the obvious, we would not [...]

30Jun2010 | and and Jeb Bleckly | 11 comments | Continued

Nuclear Energy Should Be Subsidized?

In a March 5 Los Angeles Times op-ed, “Jump-starting Nuclear Energy,” Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore, who now co-chairs the Clean and Safe Energy Coalition, lauds the Obama administration for its decision to “guarantee loans for two advance-design nuclear plants in Georgia.” Nuclear energy diversifies our energy portfolio and doesn’t pollute the air the way fossil [...]

20May2010 | Art Carden and Mike Hammock | 9 comments | Continued

Anti-Populists Made America Great?

New York Times neoconservative columnist David Brooks dislikes populism (“The Populist Addiction,” January 25). “Trust your betters and criticize not their deeds,” he says in effect. After all, when you become a billionaire, you’ll expect others to treat you thus. That any one of us might strike it rich stems, apparently, from the wonderfully open, [...]

20Apr2010 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 1 comment | Continued

Government Must Stimulate to Avoid a 1937-Style Recession?

It is rather unfortunate that the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ Economics Prize Committee chose to award the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics to Paul Krugman. It is not that Krugman did not deserve the prize—his contributions to international trade theory were indeed substantive and valuable. The problem is that by 2008 Krugman had long [...]

24Mar2010 | Ivan Pongracic Jr. | 6 comments | Continued

The Health Care Debate Was “Meaningful”?

Let’s give credit where credit is due. David Brooks does say one true thing in his New York Times column, “The Values Question”, on government health care reform: “The system after reform will look as it does today, only bigger and more expensive.” Brooks is certainly right that no “health care reform” proposal with any [...]

24Feb2010 | Charles Johnson | 1 comment | Continued

Medical Markets Can’t Work?

Dr. Darshak Sanghavi, an academic pediatric cardiologist who (like all physicians) financially benefits from the cartelization of medicine, explains in Slate, the online magazine, that health care markets can’t work because of the information asymmetry between physician and patient (“Talk to the Invisible Hand”). So we need the cartel. This is not particularly surprising; most [...]

5Jan2010 | Theodore Levy | 5 comments | Continued

Profit is Bad for Your Health?

Many self-styled healthcare “reformers” favor a “public” (read: government) insurance option. The advantage of the government plan, President Obama said, is that “there wouldn’t be a profit motive involved.” Some supporters hoped the public option would be a step toward a single-payer government-run system in which the profit motive would disappear entirely from healthcare decisions. [...]

18Nov2009 | Art Carden | 8 comments | Continued

World War II Ended the Great Depression?

In his 2008 book, The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008, Paul Krugman writes: “The Great Depression in the United States was brought to an end by a massive deficit-financed public works program, known as World War II.” He has since repeated this bon mot in a number of columns and television [...]

23Oct2009 | Richard W. Fulmer | 29 comments | Continued

Free-Marketeers Should Welcome Regulation?

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Paul Singer, chairman of the Manhattan Institute, suggests that “there is an urgent need for a new global regulatory initiative” to address the causes of the worldwide financial collapse and that even those who appreciate the qualities of free markets should welcome the new and different regulations he proposes [...]

23Sep2009 | Peter Lewin | 5 comments | Continued

Saving Is Killing the Economy?

In the midst of the current recession, many of the oldest fallacies in economics are making a comeback. In a column titled “Why Saving is Killing the Economy,” senior writer Chris Isidore repeats one of the oldest: that the key to economic recovery or growth is consumption and that saving retards that process. Isidore states [...]

19Aug2009 | Steven Horwitz | 6 comments | Continued

Government Must Keep Track of Derivatives?

Regardless of what caused the crisis, government efforts to regulate derivatives will only lock in undesirable aspects of the current market and ensure that politically connected players reap artificial gains. It is absurd to ask politicians to promote financial integrity and sound accounting. They are the worst violators of these principles on the planet.

17Jun2009 | Robert P. Murphy | 8 comments | Continued

Oil Prices Are Rigged? It Just Ain’t So!

In reality, all prices are determined by supply and demand, properly defined. Outside investors with lots of money can certainly influence prices, but there are always risks. Funds that had large “long” bets on commodities took a bath as oil fell from its July 2008 high of $145 down to well below $50 a few months later. Futures markets allow producers and consumers to hedge against needless risk by locking in prices, and they allow speculators with superior foresight to improve the allocation of resources over time. Our Time authors think they’ve shown that the oil market is rigged, but it just ain’t so!

21May2009 | Robert P. Murphy | 2 comments | Continued

Regulation Will Stop Future Madoffs? It Just Ain’t So!

Bernard Madoff is a boon to financial regulation advocates. A well-known Wall Street figure, he confessed to defrauding his clients of $50 billion, an amazing number. It is now established conventional wisdom, blared across the media, that this and other financial disasters would likely not have happened had there been proper government supervision. With deregulation [...]

24Apr2009 | Chidem Kurdas | 8 comments | Continued

T. Boone Pickens is Right About Oil Imports? It Just Ain’t So!

The $700 billion that Americans spend annually to purchase oil from other countries (according to Pickens) is a price not a transfer. For the $700 billion we send to oil exporters, we get something in return—oil. Our receipt of millions of barrels of oil in exchange for that money is hardly a transfer. We receive a versatile commodity that can be used for everything from making plastics to fueling family vacations. The exporters receive the $700 billion that they can then use to purchase other goods and services.

1Apr2009 | E. Frank Stephenson | 6 comments | Continued

Greenspan Should Be Shocked by Risky Lending?

Toward the end of his tenure as Fed chairman in early 2006, Alan Greenspan was the object of praise edging at times into adulation. It came from some unlikely sources. Milton Friedman penned an encomium for Greenspan in the pages of the Wall Street Journal titled, “The Greenspan Story: He Has Set a Standard.” After [...]

2Mar2009 | Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr. | 0 comments | Continued

Individualism Clashes with Cooperation? It Just Ain’t So!

Individualists get a bad rap in politics these days. That should come as no surprise; politics these days is dominated by electoral politics, and electoral politics is an essentially anti-individualistic enterprise. With free markets and other forms of voluntary association, people who can’t agree on what’s worthwhile can go their own ways. But the point [...]

20Jan2009 | Charles Johnson | 5 comments | Continued

The Free Market Is Failing?

There is no doubt the U.S. economy has hit a rough patch over the last several months. As is often the case when economic problems make headlines, pundits rush to declare that capitalism is “in trouble,” or “is ailing” or even “has failed.” This reaction to economic bad news is as old as capitalism itself. [...]

1Dec2008 | Steven Horwitz | 6 comments | Continued
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