Prices

Government has been meddling in health care for over 100 years, and the latest health care reform is just the latest effort that will result in more expensive health care.

In spite of past assurances to the contrary, our central planners at the Federal Reserve emerged this week to announce that their zero-interest-rate policy will continue. Is the world coming to realize that the emperors have no clothes?

Investors and real estate agents often tell people to “buy land, they’re not making any more!” But in truth, land is heterogeneous, and whether or not it increases in value depends on many factors that can transform nearly worthless land into valuable land.

Progressives once bragged about how their economic policies favored whites over blacks in the job market. Nowadays, Progressives claim to be helping racial minorities, although their economic policies remain exactly the same.

The "junk silver" (90% US silver coins) seems to have disappeared. After checking several websites that deal in such coins almost all catagories have no inventory to sell. You can still buy bright and shiny versions of the coins at around a 20% premium over the silver value.

A “living wage” is a function not just of wages, but also the cost of living. So why aren’t living-wage advocates picketing grocery stores, home sellers, and gas stations demanding they slash prices? Why are employers solely responsible for making everything affordable?

Wu has written an outline of international price theories that map the theoretical development of international economics. It is a major achievement.

Many governments — including the US — have often inhumanely forbidden families from supplying ransoms to kidnappers to save loved ones. The Obama administration recently, and correctly, suspended the practice of prosecuting families in these cases.

As news of Venezuela’s suffering keeps coming through, one cannot help but feel a certain sense of dread. All governments control the money supply to essentially the same extent that Maduro’s administration does. All around the world we have monetary socialism, where national currencies are subject solely to political power. And one cannot help but wonder (and fear) how many more such economic disasters it will take before it becomes clear that socialism of all shapes, sizes, and degrees, is unrealizable, unbearable, and unforgivable.  

Economist Jeffrey Sachs is complaining that some new drugs cost "too much." But after we sift through all the intellectual property rules, the FDA regs, and the government subsidies, it's impossible to guess what a "correct" price for the drugs might be.