All Posts Tagged With: "productivity"

The Great Outsourcing Scare of 2004

Last year a protectionist wind filled the air. All the good jobs, Americans were told, were disappearing faster than one could say “New Delhi.” On opening his local newspaper, the typical American would find articles alerting, “As job exports rise, some economists rethink the mathematics of free trade.” Or: “Thomson Trims 1,535 Jobs by Shifting [...]

1Mar2005 | | 3 comments | Continued

The Legacy of Marx

A number of women (and men) have recently been contending that women who are just as productive as men are being employed on the average for only about 70 percent as much pay, and that the statistics prove it. I am not going to quarrel with the comparisons of men’s and women’s actual wages, but [...]

1Nov2004 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Most Elusive Proposition

Most explanations of the division of labor are actually explanations of increased productivity due to specialization. The most common example is Adam Smith’s pin factory in The Wealth of Nations, where each worker becomes better at his job because that’s all he has to concentrate on. But the increase in wealth from the division of [...]

1Oct2004 | | 2 comments | Continued

Bermuda, Freedom, and Economic Growth

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the presumptive presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, says he wants to end Bermuda’s offshore “creed of greed” and crack down on the “corporate Benedict Arnolds” who move offshore to avoid paying U.S. taxes. (The statements are taken from the Bermuda Mid Ocean News, January 23, 2004.) Kerry said, “I [...]

1Jun2004 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Virtues of Sweatshops

Stefan Spath was formerly executive director of FEE. An acquaintance said to me the other day how appalling it is to see so many Americans revel in the gifts received during the holidays. “We should be ashamed of ourselves,” he lamented. “Most of this stuff was manufactured in sweatshops.” Such a misinformed notion shouldn’t go [...]

1Mar2002 | | 2 comments | Continued

No Bad Thing at All

Ralph Hood is a writer in Huntsville, Alabama. One of the best observations I ever heard on the free market came from a redneck aircraft mechanic named Claudie. It was sometime back in the seventies at Huntsville (Alabama) Aviation Corporation. I sold airplanes; Claudie fixed them. I walked into the shop one day and Claudie [...]

1Oct2001 | | 1 comment | Continued

Divide and Conquer

If I had to pick my favorite sentence in all of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action (a daunting task in a 900-page book), it would be this one: “The fact that my fellow man wants shoes as I do does not make it harder for me to get shoes, but easier” (p. 673 of the [...]

1Dec2000 | | 0 comments | Continued

Take This Job and Shove It, at the Margin

Many believe that pay is overemphasized and much too unequal in market economies. Supposedly, most people enjoy working, and so while they have to be paid to survive comfortably, they don’t have to be bribed with bonuses tied to performance to do a good job. Indeed, psychological experiments indicate that the intrinsic interest people have in doing a task declines when they are paid for doing it.

1Sep2000 | | 0 comments | Continued

Mutual Accommodation

In The Future and Its Enemies, Virginia Postrel notes the astonishing fact that if you thoroughly shuffle an ordinary deck of 52 playing cards, chances are practically 100 percent that the resulting arrangement of cards has never before existed. Never. Every time you shuffle a deck, you produce an arrangement of cards that exists for [...]

1May2000 | | 9 comments | Continued

Technology, Progress, and Freedom

Edward Younkins is professor of accountancy and business administration at Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, West Virginia. Technology represents man’s attempt to make life easier. Technological advances improve people’s standard of living, increase leisure time, help eliminate poverty, and lead to a greater variety of products. Progress allows people more time to spend on higher [...]

1Jan2000 | | 1 comment | Continued

Fist of Steel

Dale DeBoer is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Last year was bad for U.S. steel producers. Imports jumped to historic highs, and domestic prices fell. Corporate steel profits collapsed, and almost six percent of steelworkers lost their jobs. Crying foul, steel producers appealed for relief under U.S. international [...]

1Nov1999 | | 1 comment | Continued

Conflicting Visions

People generally share common goals. Most of us want: poor people to enjoy higher standards of living, greater traffic safety, fewer wars, greater racial harmony, cleaner air and water, and less crime. Despite their common goals, more often than not we see people grouped into factions, fighting tooth and nail to promote differing government policies. [...]

1Oct1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

American Abundance: The New Economic and Moral Prosperity by Lawrence A. Kudlow

Forbes-American Heritage • 1997 • 212 pages • $22.95 William Peterson, a Heritage Foundation adjunct scholar, is the Distinguished Lundy Professor Emeritus of Business Philosophy at Campbell University in North Carolina. Over the last 15 years, the U.S. economy has experienced a 3 percent real average rate of growth in gross domestic product (with only [...]

1Apr1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

49 and Holding

The federal regulatory monster inflicts massive costs on the U.S. economy. No sector feels this statist wrath more sharply than small business. Perhaps burdened the most are small, enterprising firms looking to expand. Like the federal progressive income tax, many regulations punish success: a growing firm that adds employees faces an ever-increasing regulatory burden. Indeed, [...]

1Nov1998 | | 8 comments | Continued

Leonard E. Read, Crusader

If you had known Leonard E. Read in the 1930s, you would probably not have picked him as a future crusader for the freedom philosophy. Charismatic, energetic, debonair, he was a businessman, an organization man, a Chamber of Commerce man. In 1932, in the depth of the Depression, he became manager of the Western Division [...]

1Sep1998 | | 2 comments | Continued

Specialization and Wealth

Last month I explained how a remarkable degree of social cooperation emerges through market communication. This month, let’s consider some of the advantages we realize from that cooperation. At a general level these advantages are obvious. It simply makes sense that we can produce more if our actions are in harmony than if we are [...]

1Aug1998 | | 1 comment | Continued

One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism by William Greider

Simon & Schuster • 1997 • 528 pages • $27.50 Stanley Kober is a research fellow in foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. The American economy is booming. Unemployment and inflation are low. Exports are soaring, and the budget deficit is shrinking as revenues exceed everyone’s expectations. But William Greider isn’t happy. The real [...]

1Feb1998 | | 0 comments | Continued
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