All Posts Tagged With: "politicians"
Andrew Mellon: The Entrepreneur as Politician
Rarely do spectacular entrepreneurs leave their realm of business for the political arena. One exception is Andrew Mellon, the third-wealthiest American of his era, who left a dazzling career in American industry to become secretary of treasury under Presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover. Mellon established his career in Pittsburgh as a successful [...]
1Dec2008 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 4 comments | ContinuedPoliticians Eye the Oil Market
With oil prices setting records every week and gas prices topping $4 per gallon, voters are getting increasingly angry. This naturally makes the politicians nervous, so they do what they can to divert blame from themselves at all costs. Two easy targets are “Big Oil” and speculators. In this article we’ll see that the politicians’ [...]
1Oct2008 | Robert P. Murphy | 1 comment | ContinuedCharacter, Liberty, and Economics
Over four decades I’ve written scores of articles, essays, and columns on economics; taught the subject at the university level; and given hundreds of speeches on it. In recent years the nexus between the economics of a free society and individual character has worked its way into my writing, speaking, and thinking with increasing emphasis. [...]
1Jul2008 | Lawrence W. Reed | 11 comments | ContinuedBook Reviews – July 2008
- A Farewell to Alms by Gregory Clark Reviewed by Gene Callahan
- Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Don’t by John Lott Reviewed by Robert P. Murphy
- Our First Revolution: The Remarkable British Upheaval that Inspired America’s Founding Fathers by Michael Barone Reviewed by Martin Morse Wooster
- Nanny State: How Food Fascists, Teetotaling Do-Gooders, Priggish Moralists, and Other Boneheaded Bureaucrats Are Turning America Into a Nation of Children David Harsanyi Reviewed by George Leef
The Misplaced Acceptance of Political Leaders
Richard Ebeling is the president of FEE. This is an election year, and as in all past election years we are inundated with promises and proposals from candidates, each hoping to attract our votes. For the most part what they are promising is “leadership.” They tell us all the things they will do for us [...]
1Sep2006 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedMencken’s Wisdom
Donald Boudreaux (dboudrea@gmu.edu) is chairman of the economics department at George Mason University. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of H. L. Mencken (1880–1956). I wish that this Bard of Baltimore had lived far longer—past the age of Methuselah—so that those of us born after World War II could have enjoyed his [...]
1Jun2006 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 2 comments | ContinuedLaw and Good Intentions
Americans, not just classical-liberal ones, have an almost instinctual distrust of government. Our nation began in a revolt inspired partly by the “Intolerable Acts” of King George III and taxation without representation. The Declaration of Independence recited a lengthy list of grievances against the British government, summarized as “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, [...]
1Jun2005 | Andrew P. Morriss | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Lesser of Two Evils
Leonard Read (1898–1983) was the founder and president of FEE beginning in 1946 until his death. September 26 marks the 106th anniversary of his birth. This article first appeared in The Freeman, February 1963. According to The Columbia Encyclopedia, “the existence of only two major parties, as in most English-speaking countries, presupposes general public agreement [...]
1Sep2004 | Leonard E. Read | 3 comments | ContinuedScotland: The Bitter Taste of Independence
For nearly a thousand years, the Scots have been struggling to gain independence from England—and a bloody struggle it has been, too, costing countless lives and sowing destruction in both countries. An act of union in 1707, and the suppression of revolts in 1715 and 1745, left Scotland firmly a part of the United Kingdom [...]
1May2004 | James L. Payne | 1 comment | ContinuedBook Reviews
Rethinking the Great Depression: A New View of Its Causes and Consequences by Gene Smiley Ivan R. Dee • 2002 • 169 pages • $24.95 Reviewed by George C. Leef Recently, I found myself in an e-mail argument with a friend who is intelligent and well-educated—but not in economics. I had made the point that the best macroeconomic policy is one [...]
1Sep2003 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedSeeing the World Plain
Doug Bandow, a nationally syndicated columnist, is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and the author and editor of several books. Washington, D.C., is filled with professions of good intentions by politicians and bureaucrats as they steadily strip away Americans’ liberty and money. The political class uses even the most serious social problem to [...]
1Feb2003 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Redistribution of Blame
According to John Kenneth Galbraith, the economy will at any given moment contain a certain inventory of undiscovered fraud. This inventory (he called it the “bezzle”) rises and falls with the business cycle. When an economic shakeout brings specific cases before the public eye, politicians cry for “reform!” They are unfortunately less interested in corporate [...]
1Oct2002 | Harold B. Jones Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedAmerica Is Headed Toward Plutocracy?
In a New York Times op-ed (June 14, 2002), columnist Paul Krugman lamented the increasing inequality between rich and poor, and expressed concern that this will lead to an erosion of democracy. He needn’t worry himself (more important, he needn’t worry his readers), since his argument depends on misleading arguments about wealth disparities and philosophical [...]
1Oct2002 | Aeon J. Skoble | 3 comments | ContinuedDesigning Dependence
Government now permeates American life, shaping and determining in countless ways the choices available to us. As Tocqueville feared, the U.S. government has largely succeeded in its efforts to spare us “all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living.” Through Social Security, Medicare, public education, and the rest, the sphere of autonomous [...]
1May2002 | Charlotte A. Twight | 1 comment | ContinuedPublic Interest or Private Interest?
That private interest dominates market decisions is widely accepted, if not always applauded. Farmers don’t get up early on cold mornings in Nebraska to plant crops because of concern over world hunger, but because they want more income for themselves and their families. People don’t invest in pharmaceutical firms because they want to help the [...]
1May2002 | Dwight R. Lee | 0 comments | ContinuedWhy America Gets Fleeced
One of the occasional features on NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw is “The Fleecing of America,” a series of segments exposing cases of waste and fraud that victimize individuals or the general public. Some of the examples are swindles or scams by private companies or individuals, and the obvious solution is to exercise more [...]
1Feb2002 | Melvin D. Barger | 0 comments | ContinuedCapitalists Should Love the Estate Tax?
Writing in the February 15 issue of online magazine Salon, philosophy professor Sam Fleischacker says that he found it “inspiring” that George Soros, Bill Gates Sr., Warren Buffett, and several other wealthy people had spoken out in favor of retaining the estate tax. Fleischacker argues that it is precisely defenders of capitalism who should “fervently [...]
1Jul2001 | Aeon J. Skoble | 3 comments | Continued-
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