How are fiat money and the business cycle related? Without sound money, calculation is less efficient and the economy will be prone to business cycles. With sound money policy, no boom-bust cycle will emerge and monetary calculation and planning will be as efficient as possible in an uncertain world. John Cochran explains.
Stagflation is a term that originated in the early 1970s to identify the simultaneous occurrence of recession and inflation—a phenomenon that Keynesian theory had previously suggested was impossible. The industrialized world is being rudely reminded that stagflation is indeed possible, and policymakers are at a loss as to what to do about it.
Those who speak of "commodification," which apparently has become a buzzword in socialist circles, actually have things backwards. The presence of a price upon a good does not make it scarce; rather, it is the scarcity that creates the price. To put it another way, the very nature of scarcity means that a good must be rationed, as it cannot be given freely to everyone who wants it.
Oil prices have reached a 29-month high, reflecting a variety of factors including the prospects for war. At the same time, the Producer Price Index recorded a 1.6 percent jump in January, the biggest across-the-board increase since January 1990. Just as the script dictates, writes Lew Rockwell, cries of "gouging" are now heard across the land.
Those who are in the news for pilfering the shuttle debris that rained down on Texas and Louisiana earlier are getting a bad rap, writes Christopher Westley. While the government can retrieve shuttle remains on public lands in any way it sees fit, it cannot violate the rights of property owners simply because they were unfortunate enough to wake up one morning and find government property on their land.
Nationwide, rose prices are often double on Valentine's Day from what they are on most other days of the year. Why are rose prices so high on Valentine's Day? And while we answer the question, let's be careful to keep cause and effect straight.
The classical economists were opponents of paper money. And yet in their positive case for commodity money, they made two great errors: believing that an additional supply of notes on the market confers some social benefit and believing that money's value needs to be stable in order to meet the needs of trade. These errors inadvertantly paved the way for political intervention.
Sympathy and justice are wonderful. But neither is furthered by the "living wage" movement, writes John Egger. A university shouldn't put its workers on its own welfare system. To respect their dignity we must pay them what they earn, and that can be established only on the market.
The accusations against Wal-Mart are many, and they include: paying overseas workers too little; not paying benefits to part-time workers; refusing to sell items that don't fall within its criteria for being "family-oriented"; not giving enough back to the community; and discriminating against women. Karen De Coster and Brad Edmonds respond.
The idea that commerce and war are allies is a complete perversion of the old liberal tradition. The first theorists of commerce from the 16th through the 18th centuries saw that a most meritorious aspect of commerce is its link to freedom and peace, that commerce made it possible for people to co-operate rather than fight. It made armaments and war less necessary, not more.
