All Posts Tagged With: "economic freedom"
Economic Independence: Bedrock of Freedom
Economic independence is the bedrock of all other freedoms.
20Dec2011 | Wendy McElroy | 16 comments | ContinuedIndigenous African Free-Market Liberalism
Africa remains an enigmatic paradox: a continent rich in mineral resources yet so desperately poor. But the paradox is only superficial: Africa is poor because she is not free. Only 10 of the 54 African countries can be labeled economic success stories: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritius, Uganda, and South Africa. This [...]
24Aug2011 | George B. N. Ayittey | 5 comments | ContinuedThe Market: This Time It’s Personal
Freedom of movement, in physical and social space, is the essence of the free society.
12Jul2011 | Sandy Ikeda | 3 comments | ContinuedPoverty Is Easy to Explain
Academics, politicians, clerics, and others always seem perplexed by the question: Why is there poverty? Answers usually range from exploitation and greed to slavery, colonialism, and other forms of immoral behavior. Poverty is seen as something to be explained with complicated analysis, conspiracy doctrines, and incantations. This vision of poverty is part of the problem [...]
21Apr2011 | Walter E. Williams | 27 comments | ContinuedWhat Economic Freedom Indexes Leave Out
In a syndicated column last October, television journalist John Stossel lamented the downgrading from sixth to eighth place—“behind Canada!”—of the United States on the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom. The Index is based on several metrics, including freedom of movement of capital, the degree of business regulation, and levels of taxes and [...]
24Feb2011 | Kevin A. Carson | 6 comments | ContinuedTariffs and Freedom
A historical episode that opponents of consumer sovereignty—that is, opponents of free trade—frequently cite to support their case for high tariffs is late nineteenth-century America. Pat Buchanan, for example, in his book The Great Betrayal asserts about the 1800s that “Behind a tariff wall . . . the United States had gone from an agrarian [...]
22Dec2010 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 19 comments | ContinuedThe Decline in Economic Freedom
In the early 1980s both the United States and the United Kingdom reduced marginal tax rates, brought inflation under control, and relaxed both regulations and trade barriers. Many other countries soon followed, and the result was a quarter-century of expansion in both economic freedom and the growth of income. These movements can be observed in [...]
24Nov2010 | , , and James D. Gwartney | 4 comments | ContinuedMaking Poor Nations Rich: Entrepreneurship and the Process of Economic Development
During the 2008 presidential campaign, a critic of then-candidate Barack Obama stated in a letter to the Wall Street Journal, “If he becomes president, I hope he hires some economists who understand why Great Britain, China, Hong Kong and South Korea all prospered when they let private industry rather than government allocate their country’s resources.” [...]
22Oct2010 | Robert Batemarco | 1 comment | ContinuedGive Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media . . .
In the eighteenth century, Adam Smith explained the three forces at work against the establishment and maintenance of economic freedom. In his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith warned of the arrogance and danger of what he called “the man of system,” or the social engineer, who presumes to redesign man and society [...]
6Jul2010 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedMore Border-Picture Economics
I suggested in the May issue that an aerial photograph of the border between barren Haiti and the heavily forested Dominican Republic was a predictor of the recent Haitian earthquake devastation. Not the earthquake, mind you, but the devastation that followed. The property-rights vacuum that encouraged Haitians to cut trees down without replanting also motivated [...]
29Jun2010 | T. Norman Van Cott | 0 comments | ContinuedSowing and Reaping Devastation in Haiti
Pictures and accounts of Haiti’s earthquake devastation remind me of a November 1987 National Geographic photograph of Haiti’s border with the Dominican Republic–the two nations “share” the Caribbean island Hispaniola. The photo showed a heavily forested Dominican Republic and a barren Haiti. The caption noted that Haiti was once heavily forested. I bet some of [...]
19Apr2010 | T. Norman Van Cott | 6 comments | ContinuedBotswana: A Diamond in the Rough
Over the past 40 years Botswana has been sub-Saharan Africa’s fastest-growing country and one of the fastest-growing countries in the world. Though it started off as one of the poorest countries in the world, its per capita income now compares favorably with many Mediterranean counterparts. Like most countries, the financial crisis has slowed Botswana’s recent [...]
24Mar2010 | Scott Beaulier | 3 comments | ContinuedThe Wisdom of Nien Cheng
Nien Cheng, author of Life and Death in Shanghai (1986), died in Washington last November at the age of 94. She was an incredibly courageous woman and the embodiment of grace and wisdom. She loved traditional Chinese culture, but her world was shattered on August 30, 1966, when the Red Guards ransacked her home and, [...]
24Mar2010 | James A. Dorn | 4 comments | ContinuedThe Ideas of Liberty and FEE
The great University of Chicago economist Frank Knight wrote in 1921 that it makes vastly more difference practically whether we disseminate correct ideas among the people at large in the field of human relations than is the case with mechanical problems. For good or ill, we are committed to the policy of democratic control in [...]
1Nov2008 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 0 comments | ContinuedAid, Trade, and Institutional Quality in Africa
Joshua Hall is pursuing his Ph.D. in economics at West Virginia University. Matthew Hisrich is a senior policy fellow with the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy in Kansas. Screenwriter Richard Curtis received a great deal of attention for his 2005 movie The Girl in the Café. The film was the big-screen component of the [...]
1Jan2007 | and Joshua C. Hall | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Roots of Poverty in Latin America
Few things stand out in such stark contrast as the economic and social differences between the United States and the countries of Latin America. Since gaining its independence from Great Britain in the late eighteenth century, the United States has offered virtually unlimited opportunity for a growing population, along with a rising standard of living [...]
14Dec2005 | Richard M. Ebeling | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Effrontery of the "Open Space" Movement
New Hampshire is called the “Live Free or Die”
state. It has garnered such a reputation as a bastion
of freedom that the Porcupine members
of the Free State Project selected it as the place to which
they would like to relocate in order to live more independently
and more productively.
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