Free Market

The Free Market 21, no. 4 (April 2003)

The New York Times recently ran a three-part series on a string of tragic industrial accidents at facilities owned by McWane Inc., a large producer of sewer and water pipe based in Alabama. The series describes nine apparently needless and sometimes especially gruesome deaths, as well as several horrendous injuries suffered by workmen. All of them are presented as taking place in an environment of such reckless irresponsibility and callous disregard for the value of human life as to strain credulity.

When discussing NASA and its impact upon our society, one must deal with myths that have been spawned by the agency and its supporters over the last four decades, the first being that NASA, supposedly driven by technology, has created new technologies that have been easily transferred to civilian use.

Consider: the government reports that job discrimination complaints against private employers increased 4 percent in 2002, to a total of 84,442, the highest level in seven years. Those filing complaints took in $310.5 million in monetary benefits. The main complaint involves race, followed by sex, but the big increase came with allegations involving religion, age, and national origin. The trend represents a huge diversion from the main goal of restoring economic growth.

There was a time when what we are currently experiencing was called a depression. But after the 1930s, that word was ruled out. Now we are losing the term recession as well. Those who follow economic headlines seek the answer to a thousand little questions but only one big one: are we getting richer or poorer? The answer to the big question is becoming increasingly obvious: we are losing ground.

As the Washington Post recently reported, "The Federal Reserve Board has recently waged a vigorous campaign of defense, arguing that it was better to have boomed and busted than never to have boomed at all." Poetic perhaps, but is it sound?

When some left-wing acti-vists recently began their What Would Jesus Drive? campaign against sport utility vehicles, the first reaction of most folks—and especially libertarians—was a simple, "Are these people really serious?"

Late last year, in a move that gives even politics a bad name, the Federal Reserve announced yet another cut in its key interest rates. Around the same time, Fed Governor Ben Bernanke gave a speech praising the power of alchemy to lower the price of gold, and, similarly, the power of the Fed to print as many dollars as it wants. Hence, the Federal Funds Rate is down to 1.25 percent, while the discount rate stands at 0.75 percent.

The Free Market 21, no. 2 (February 2003)

Proponents of markets often note that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

To read the works of Bastiat is to read economic clarity and logic at its finest. However, numerous examples of the same "broken window fallacies" Bastiat debunked some 150 years ago can be found today in abundant supply. While these neoprotectionist arguments are cloaked in modern language, their core sophisms remain unchanged.