No one can contend that the Federal Reserve System has brought economic stability or conquered the trade cycle, writes Hans Sennholz. On the contrary, its critics are convinced that a politically conceived and administered money monopoly, such as the Federal Reserve System, is the worst of all money systems. It will breed business cycles as long as it lives.
In a market society, any distinction of classes only serves to represent some snapshot in time as movement between classes is continually fluctuating, writes Christopher Coyne. This is in stark contrast to the non-market caste system where affiliation with a class or caste is hereditary and largely unchanging.
Hardly a day goes by when Mark Brandly doesn't observe confusion on the subject of international trade, from pundits who blame it all of American economic and social to those who think trade can only thrive in the context of treaties and war. This primer corrects most of the big mistakes.
It's a neat trick, writes Adam Young: the media sell a certain viewpoint, then take a poll and cite public opinion to illustrate that, yes indeed, the public agrees with what it has been told, and that the only solution is more government intervention.
It is never profitable--and therefore, never reasonable--for a business to refuse to do business that is profitable for it to do, writes George Reisman. To pretend that businessmen and their greed are nonetheless responsible for people not being supplied, and for people therefore suffering deprivation and even death, is to display an ignorance of elementary economic law.
The alarm raised by mainstream economists that corporate cost cutting will undermine the real foundation of the economy is based on a flawed view of the essence of savings. On the contrary, writes Frank Shostak, cost cutting is an important means in correcting previous erroneous decisions so that real wealth can be generated again.
There is something about monetary phenomena that make them a particularly misunderstood aspect of economic life. Deflation is no exception. There seems to be little understanding as to what it is, what causes it, and whether or not it is something that should be prevented. The effects of deflation, like the quality of drinking water, cannot be considered without regard to its source.
Don't expect Amtrak to go away any time soon, despite the facts that its demise would be a cause of rejoicing for most of the country and that there is no justification for federal involvement in transportation found anywhere in the Constitution. The power of entrenched bureaucrats to create dependents of both politicians and their voters underscores a major reason why.
Terrorists killed nearly three thousand people on September 11, 2001, but more than three thousand died in the year 2001 waiting for a kidney transplant. Mark Thornton reports that these deaths are largely avoidable, via a market for organs.
