All Posts Tagged With: "wealth"
Going to Graceland
A recent trip to Memphis took me to Elvis Presley’s famed home, Graceland. Touring Presley’s mansion and its grounds is fascinating for fans of his music, and the Presley estate has done a marvelous job in capturing his music and life. But visiting Graceland mostly interested me as an economist. Walking through the home of [...]
4Jan2012 | Andrew P. Morriss | 9 comments | Continued“Find Out What the People Want”: The Russell Conwell Story
“There is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings. . . .” Those words come, interestingly enough, from what is almost certainly the most successful charitable fundraising speech ever delivered. It was given over 6,000 times, provided almost 1,700 young people with the opportunity to [...]
26Oct2011 | Harold B. Jones Jr. | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Science of Liberty: Democracy, Reason, and the Laws of Nature
Timothy Ferris is a prolific bestselling author of 12 books on cosmology, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the recipient of several awards for popular science writing. The Science of Liberty is a welcome treatment of a subject often and regrettably neglected by intellectual historians in the social sciences. [...]
21Sep2011 | William N. Butos | 2 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 | ContinuedCommonwealth
Some two decades after the collapse of communism, socialist intellectuals still scramble to rehabilitate Marx and collectivist social theory in general, with Duke University professor Michael Hardt and Italian sociologist Antonio Negri leading the bunch. Academics are attracted to their radical critique of existing capitalist institutions. Non-academics and educated laypersons on the left are attracted [...]
23Mar2011 | David L. Prychitko | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Power of Freedom
WARNING: After reading this column, many of you will want to send me emails condemning me for my apostasy or telling me why I am mistaken. I welcome your feedback as I beg your indulgence. So, here goes: I don’t believe that the welfare state, or the regulatory state, inevitably leads to widespread poverty or [...]
22Oct2010 | Donald J. Boudreaux | 29 comments | ContinuedThe Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
Modern political discourse often treats democracy as if it were synonymous with liberty. In The Future of Freedom, Fareed Zakaria aims to refute that facile notion and reinvigorate the distinction between the two. As Zakaria puts it, pithily: “The execution of Socrates was democratic but not liberal.” Zakaria’s book is an extended brief against the [...]
2Jul2010 | Gene Healy | 2 comments | ContinuedThe Real Meaning of Privilege
“They live in an expensive mansion, fly first-class to foreign countries, and eat at the finest restaurants. They send their kids to private schools. They’re so privileged.” How often have you heard some variant of the lines above? I’d bet it’s a lot. Yet, typically, the word “privileged” is inaccurate. We certainly all know or [...]
23Sep2009 | David R. Henderson | 11 comments | Continued
Mr. President, Meet Mr. Smith
Since it’s obviously possible for people to reach the pinnacle of politics without seeming to know much about either economics or Smith, perhaps we’re overdue for a little reminder about both.
1Dec2008 | Lawrence W. Reed | 4 comments | ContinuedBig Government–Big Risk
In his Freeman column last June, “The End Run to Freedom,” economist Russell Roberts makes the following argument: As people get wealthier, they demand more security. Their demand for security leads many people to favor the welfare state or the nanny state. The welfare state refers to a government that subsidizes people who bear losses; [...]
1Jan2007 | David R. Henderson | 11 comments | ContinuedOnly the Rich Are Getting Richer? It Just Ain’t So!
“In an era when the rich are the only income group getting richer,” begins an article in the April 13 Washington Post. (Blaine Harden, “As the Rich Ride In, Many Are Priced Out of Homes on the Range.”) But in this one 13-word statement, versions of which have become so common in conversations and newspaper [...]
1Aug2006 | David R. Henderson | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Moral and Cultural Climate of Entrepreneurship
About 40 years ago I learned the following poem. It exemplifies a moral and cultural attitude about not only entrepreneurship, but also the moral purpose of human life itself. Written by Dean Alfange, it is known simply as “My Creed”: I do not choose to be a common man. It is my right to be [...]
1Mar2006 | Douglas B. Rasmussen | 0 comments | ContinuedWarriors and Merchants
In 1915 the well-known German economic historian Werner Sombart published a book with the arresting title Merchants and Heroes. It argued that the war then underway between the Central Powers and the Entente was not just a traditional great-power conflict. It was rather a struggle between two different worldviews embodied by France and Britain on [...]
1Nov2005 | Stephen Davies | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Dangers of Eminent Domain
In Kelo v. City of New London the United States
Supreme Court greatly weakened the constitutional
protections that property owners have enjoyed
against governments wishing to seize private property.
This weakening is unfortunate.
The Radicals’ Rancorous Rage
In a revolution for liberty, they sought power. In an age of individuality and self-reliance, they demanded obedience. In a century of personal excellence, they relished “leveling.” They called themselves Radical Patriots, as though the troops who starved and froze at Valley Forge weren’t patriotic enough. But these eighteenth-century politicians had about them little that [...]
1Jun2005 | Becky Akers | 2 comments | ContinuedFree Trade and the Climb Out of Poverty
Over the thousands of years of human history, poverty and early death have been the norm, with comfort and longevity the exceptions. The improvements in the human condition, at least on average, seen over the course of the twentieth century dwarf the improvements of the previous centuries combined. By virtually any measure one can imagine, [...]
1Mar2005 | Steven Horwitz | 0 comments | ContinuedAmbrose Bierce on Socialism
Daniel Hager (fris@michcom.net) is a writer and consultant in Lansing, Michigan. Ambrose Bierce packed a pistol when he walked the streets of San Francisco. As a long-time editor and writer there, he made many enemies through the pungency of his pen. So he wisely carried a revolver in case of retaliation. He backed up that [...]
1Dec2004 | Daniel Hager | 3 comments | Continued-
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