The New York Times recently published a piece entitled “When Kmart Moved Out, Churches and Flea Markets Moved In.” The article, penned by Kevin Williams, provides an instructive subtitle: “The retailer’s former stores are being used by tenants that might not typically get a crack at such a large haul of commercial space at an affordable price.”
Recent macroeconomic data from the United States should worry us. Amid the reopening and the biggest fiscal and monetary stimulus in recent history, and with all the possible tailwinds from policy decisions, consumer confidence has plummeted to the lowest level since 2016.
Retail sales have fallen sharply again in July, and the employment or industrial production data are far more than disappointing considering the level of stimulus and that GDP has returned to prepandemic level.
“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” so the song and the story go. This phrase is used by those wishing to justify drinking alcohol at some point during the day instead of waiting until the usual evening hours.
But a happy hour is not always just an hour.
In thirty-nine of the fifty states, some restaurants, bars, and nightclubs have happy hour from 5 to 7 on Monday through Friday, or at some other period of time that is more than an hour. During happy hour, discounted drinks and food are offered, and sometimes along with some other perks.
Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II
by Sean McMeekin
Basic Books, 2021
831 pp.
The benefits of privatization are well documented by empirical studies, so they will not be rehashed in this piece. Yet many still assume that some commodities are beyond privatization. Too often proponents of privatization fail to appreciate that humans are sentimental characters, and as a result, they are unwilling to commodify resources deemed to be sacred.
The implementation of voter ID laws to prevent fraud has led some to argue that voting rights are under assault by the state. But this mistaken assumption is predicated on a false premise, because voting is not a right. Rights exist independent of the political regime, so even though communist states abrogate human rights, this does not alter the fact that people still have a right to own property and express religious beliefs.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN for short, does not seem to usually draw much attention in modern global media. This is despite the ASEAN having a total population bigger than that of the United States or even the entire European Union, and that the resources of its ten members combined make it one of the largest economies in the world.
In the American imagination, China is on course to overtake America as an economic superpower. Commentators and average Joes alike are mesmerized by China’s manufacturing prowess and the swift ascent of Alibaba. On the nativist right, the rise of China is so intimidating that many propose industrial policy as a tool to enhance domestic competitiveness. While the ascendance of China should not be underestimated, Americans are forgetting that China is still a laggard in technology.
O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven,
It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t,
A brother’s murther!
–Hamlet, act 3, scene 3
Carl Menger (February 23, 1840–February 26, 1921) is the founder of the Austrian school of economics. He is generally recognized in economics for his contribution to the development of the concept of marginal utility and as a pioneer of the subjective value theory. For Austrian economics specifically, he laid the foundation with his insights on the use of knowledge and foresight, the importance of relative prices, the role of time, and the role of the spontaneous emergence of social institutions.
