All Posts Tagged With: "price controls"
The Myth of U.S. Prosperity during World War II
World War II, the so-called Good War, has been a fount of historical fallacies. One of the greatest—and one of the most pernicious for subsequent policymakers—is the notion that prosperity prevailed during the war. Although Americans might have been dying in the Pacific and European theaters of war, people on the home front actually benefited [...]
8Sep2011 | Robert Higgs | 2 comments | ContinuedRichman, FEE Mentioned at Forbes.com
Art Carden, economics professor at Rhodes College and a Freeman contributor, quotes Sheldon Richman in his blog post at Forbes.com: The Foundation for Economic Education’s Sheldon Richman once said that advocating policies when you don’t understand their unintended consequences is “the intellectual equivalent of drunk driving.” You can read Richman’s full article here.
8Jul2011 | Tsvetelin M. Tsonevski | 0 comments | ContinuedGovernment Can’t Regulate Just One Side of the Market
Regulations on sellers are necessarily regulations on buyers, and regulations on buyers are necessarily regulations on sellers.
3Mar2011 | Steven Horwitz | 10 comments | ContinuedTrading for Security
Americans tolerate a costly global national-security apparatus in part because they believe the country would be economically vulnerable without it. After all, we use resources from all over the world—oil being only the most prominent example. What if an embargo cut us off from supplies? Anyone expressing skepticism about this is sure to be confronted [...]
24Nov2010 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedIn Defense of Payday Lenders and Their Customers
For poor people the payday loan option is better than going hungry between paychecks.
15Jul2010 | Steven Horwitz | 24 comments | ContinuedWhat Ended the Great Depression?
What finally ended the Great Depression? That question may be the most important in economic history. If we can answer it, we can better grasp what perpetuates economic stagnation and what cures it. The Great Depression was the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. From 1931 to 1940 unemployment was always in double digits. In [...]
24Feb2010 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 43 comments | ContinuedThe Great Depression and World War II
What about World War II? Did it end the Great Depression? More generally, is war good for the economy? I answer both in the negative and borrow here from Ludwig von Mises: “War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.” As Higgs points out, because of the array of interventions in the wartime economy, war materiel was valued incorrectly and therefore the GDP data overstate economic conditions. Moreover, conscription and arms production gave a misleading employment picture
21May2009 | Art Carden | 8 comments | ContinuedThe Two-Price System: U.S. Rationing During World War II
As the United States mobilized for war after mid-1940, the government’s demands for munitions and related resources began to put pressure on certain markets, and soon prices began to rise. In 1941 they rose faster: from December 1940 to December 1941, the producer price index increased by 17 percent, the consumer price index by 10 [...]
24Apr2009 | Robert Higgs | 5 comments | ContinuedThe NRA: How Price-Fixing Perpetuated the Great Depression
The National Industrial Recovery Act (NRA) dramatically altered America’s traditional free-market system. Under the NRA, a majority of firms in any industry had government approval backed by force to determine how much a factory could expand, what wages had to be paid, the number of hours to be worked, and the prices of products. Whether or not a businessman helped write the code for his industry, he was bound by the terms and subject to a fine or jail term if he violated them.
1Apr2009 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 26 comments | ContinuedNixon’s New Economic Plan
Richard Nixon had a crisis mentality. In 1962, unhappily out of public office, he wrote an autobiographical account entitled Six Crises. Whereas some presidents have faced real crises, however, Nixon’s were more the product of his personal sense of siege. As president he twice declared a state of national emergency, first on March 23, 1970, [...]
20Jan2009 | Robert Higgs | 2 comments | ContinuedCompromise, Principles, and Politics
“Public servants” laud compromise as a principled and sensible political course. They call it statesmanship or bipartisanship, and portray it as the path to unity, while roundly criticizing those unwilling to compromise in the desired way. This appeal often strikes a chord with the public. (Leave aside that compromise is usually sought by legislative near-majorities [...]
1May2008 | Gary M. Galles | 5 comments | ContinuedHealth-Care Cons
Economist Joan Robinson (1903–1983) wrote, “The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of readymade answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” A better reason to study economics is to avoid being deceived by politicians; they are the far greater threat to life, liberty, and [...]
1Apr2008 | Sheldon Richman | 6 comments | ContinuedThe German Economic Miracle and the “Social Market Economy”
Richard Ebeling is the president of FEE. This summer marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the post-World War II German “economic miracle.” When the war ended in Europe in 1945, Germany was in a shambles. Its major cities had been destroyed either from Allied bombing or urban combat. Millions of its citizens had [...]
1Apr2008 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Times that Tried Men’s Economic Souls
Two hundred and thirty years ago this month in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the brutal and storied winter of 1777–78 came to a long-awaited close. Nearly a quarter of George Washington’s Continental Army troops encamped there had died—victims of hunger, exposure, and disease. Almost every American knows that much, but few can tell you why Congress [...]
1Mar2008 | Lawrence W. Reed | 0 comments | ContinuedPutting a Bureaucrat in Your Tank: Gasoline Markets and Regulation
If you run a barrel of crude oil through a still, the technique used by the earliest refineries and still a stage in modern refining, it separates into various fractions, including kerosene, gasoline, diesel, fuel oils, waxes, and asphalt. Without further processing, about 10 percent will be “straight run” gasoline. In the 1870s this 10 [...]
1Oct2007 | Andrew P. Morriss | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Great French Inflation
Governments have an insatiable appetite for the wealth of their subjects. When governments find it impossible to continue raising taxes or borrowing funds, they have invariably turned to printing paper money to finance their growing expenditures. The resulting inflations have often undermined the social fabric, ruined the economy, and sometimes brought revolution and tyranny in [...]
1Jul2007 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Four Mistakes of Nonlibertarians
George Leef is book review editor of The Freeman. In Libertarianism: For and Against (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), two philosophers debate the merits of libertarianism. Arguing in favor is Professor Tibor Machan, a contributing editor to The Freeman. His opponent is Professor Craig Duncan, who attempts a refutation of libertarianism and seeks to persuade readers [...]
1Jun2007 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued-
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