Immigration, particularly by illegal aliens at the southern US border, is a contentious issue in 21st century America. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has expressed concern about immigration’s probable impact on the unemployment rate. Homebuyers and renters are concerned about its impact on house prices and rents.
In around three months’ time, the Biden administration will be out of office. Exits typically prompt reflection. For an outgoing administration, the chief task is to shape the narrative. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s recent legacy-molding foray grounds the Biden administration’s legacy in the “fierce competition” with the “revisionist powers”—Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China—who want to bring down America and dominate the international order at the US government’s expense.
For religions throughout the world, established rules, studies, and practices are instrumental for their legitimacy. Established religious institutions throughout the world train theologians to study the nature of God and their belief system.
Albert Jay Nock’s Our Enemy the State, which was published nearly ninety years ago in 1935, had a great influence on Murray Rothbard, transmitted though his friend and mentor Frank Chodorov, who was Nock’s main follower. The book is rich in insights, some of which I have discussed in a forthcoming review for The Misesian, but there are many more. In what follows, I’ll comment on some of these.
For years I have held up Venezuela in my economics classes as an example of bad government policy.
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) posits that booms and busts can be explained by private versus public sectoral balances and the inherent instability of private financial markets. Stephanie Kelton frequently points to this graph of public and private surpluses and deficits:
Voluntary exchange is the core of all market economies. It is the lifeblood that propels innovation, societal welfare, and progress, creating intricate webs of interconnected transactions that heighten productivity. In pursuit of profits, businesses sell and improve their products to outperform competitors and increasingly capture market shares, spurring the development of novel ideas and solutions.
