As soon as Abraham Lincoln and the new Republican Party gained power, the average tariff rate was quickly raised from a nominal 15 percent to 47 percent and higher, and remained at such levels for decades after the war. South Carolinian John C. Calhoun's free-trade arguments, as eloquent and advanced as they were, were no match for a federal military arsenal.
Charles Lindblom is at it again. In God and Man at Yale, William Buckley, Jr.’s indictment of leftist teaching at Yale University written half a century ago, a young teacher at the college was mentioned
It is time to recognize that food prices will likely continue to fall over the long term, and that the number of commercial farmers will continue to diminish and to recognize the benefits such a trend confers upon society. It should also be made apparent that to continue to fight this trend is futile, and that it is a waste of time and money—not to mention the outright theft involved in seizing money from one group only to give it to another.
Insider trading laws, writes Dale Steinreich, have empowered the SEC to undertake a mission in information egalitarianism that favors certain classes of investors and strategies, and not others. Martha Stewart and ImClone have the book thrown at them, while the stock sales of Apple Computer's executives are ignored.
The well-being of the majority of any nation's economically disenfranchised citizens could be realized without any state control of the nation's money supply or state regulation of peaceful economic activity, writes Harry Valetine. It is a lesson that could inspire entire populations to wrest control of the economy away from the statist elitists.
The headlines of the business pages have been trumpeting the arrival of recovery now for months. How do the experts decide when recession has turned to recovery? By looking at the data, which come in packages labeled in various ways: the GDP, the leading indicators, the unemployment rate, industrial production, housing starts, commercial borrowings, office vacancy rates, and a host of others. If these tend in the negative direction, we are said to be entering a recession. If they move in a positive direction, it is said that we are recovering.
Arthur Andersen's transgressions have opened the doors to unbridled regulatory madness, writes Karen De Coster. The effect of legislation (like CARTA) will be to replace the oversight bodies that currently watch over the accounting profession with regulators who will do an even worse job of it.
Argentina cannot afford to wait for an IMF rescue package, which will only prolong the current unsustainable monetary regime. It must act now to reform its paralyzed monetary and financial system. In this interview, QJAE editor Joseph Salerno discusses the financial and banking chaos in Argentina.
The costs that the "War on Drugs" imposes upon people cannot be underestimated. We bear the costs of building and maintaining prisons, and the burdens of creating vast new classes of people who are called criminals because they have engaged in mutually agreeable exchanges with other people.
Free trade creates wealth, writes Gary Galles. But when free trade threatens the wallets of interest groups, support for government restrictions to protect them in order to assure "fair" trade suddenly blossoms--only because that sounds better than "gimme money." It is still just a form of welfare, which can only impoverish Americans by restricting our access to lower-cost sources of supply.
