Economists talked blithely of privatizing Iraqi assets, writes Joseph Stromberg, without considering the bureaucratic implications of the method, the motivations of the public authorities, the long and disgraceful history of imposing a pre-set view of what constitutes a free market, and the reality that dividing up assets in a conquered country is probably contrary to international law. There are better ways to bring freedom to the world.
If Peter Brimelow is to succeed in showing, as his subtitle states, that teacher unions — he has in mind principally the National Education Association — are destroying American education, he faces a preliminary task.
Keynesian economics has few virtues, but Paul Krugman’s book, the bulk of which collects many of his controversial columns for the New York Times, shows that even a Keynesian can on occasion have valuable things to say.
Nearly everyone knows that the Social Security system faces eventual collapse, but John Attarian remarkably claims that semantics lies at the root of the crisis.
As with the EU, Mercosur, NAFTA and other regional trading arrangements all vying for supremacy, and mercantilism entrenched at the heart of the dispute settlement system, the WTO is anything but committed to unfettered trade between individuals across national borders. Grant Nulle explains how and why.
What free-marketeers don't always make explicit is that the government and media Chicken Littles are right in part: Corporations are indeed out to make a profit. Of this point we must first observe the first lesson of business economics, as taught by the classical school markets in the 18th century. The institutions of the market channel questionable motivations to a social end.
Morgan Reynolds: "When the Bush administration took office in January, 2001, a downturn was already underway. The president and his coterie said so and blamed Clinton, but then hushed up. That was a mistake—a dose of truth about the economy would have worked better—but they learned an early lesson about psychology and confidence in Washington, D.C. Politics is all about (the) confidence (game) and prestige in the nation's capital."
Politicians believe that the size of the economy is fixed and they only have to decide how to divide it up, writes Richard Teather. Austrian economists, with their focus on the real world and human nature, know better; wealth does not just exist, it has to be created, and the disincentive effects of government actions do not just distribute wealth—they actively destroy it.
Thanks to the untiring efforts of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Americans have been faced with the greatest expansion of the government into medical care since the 1960s. When these moves are complete, the free market in American medicine will be practically gone. Interventionism will be in complete possession of the field of battle, and the task of the government will be to mop up the remaining opposition.
How well I recall the debates about the WTO and Nafta, both of which the Mises Institute editorialized against on grounds that they constituted managed trade, not free trade. In the case of Nafta, it was outright regional protectionism. But for dissenting from both sides of the phony DC debate, we were called secret protectionists.
