Caplan could just as easily have written, "An optimal solution to education would actually involve gang members randomly beating up college freshmen." I am not exaggerating. Caplan's statement is literally equivalent to my own suggestion.
Government spending — whether on our current armed forces and their more than 800 foreign bases or on "green" energy and other government-favored projects — does not produce prosperity. It only diverts resources.
The leading Baconian in political economy, who was also, fittingly, a pioneer in statistics and in the alleged science of "political arithmetic," was the fascinating opportunist and adventurer Sir William Petty (1623–1687).
Obama says that the key to progress is good government. Not so. The real common thread to progress is free enterprise. Progress and prosperity have followed movement toward freer markets and secure property rights.
Many elected officials are already wealthy by most people's standards. What makes the wealthy and otherwise successful want to hold office? Is it an overweening ego and an insatiable hunger for public adulation?
The Tea Party, no matter how successful it is at the polls in November, will certainly betray the party of liberty. There are several reasons for this, but the fundamental one is intellectual. The Tea Party does not have a coherent view of liberty.
Blinder is arguing that of course the Obama stimulus worked, because spending money creates jobs, period. To see just how naive this view is, consider that there is nothing in Blinder's argument restricting it to cases of severe recession.
Rocker was awful on economics, but his focus was not on that. He wrote about nationalism and culture, and here Rocker is fantastic. "States create no culture; indeed, they are often destroyed by higher forms of culture."
Recorded at the Mises Circle in Colorado Springs, Colorado; 18 September 2010. Sponsored by Pikes Peak Economics Club.
Recorded at the Mises Circle in Colorado Springs, Colorado; 18 September 2010. Sponsored by Pikes Peak Economics Club.
