Last month, the IMF stated that “our forecasts point to an unforgiving combination of low growth and high debt, a difficult future,” emphasizing that “governments must work to reduce debt and rebuild buffers for the next shock, which will surely come, and maybe sooner than we expect.”
The United States 10-year government bond yield reached a low of 3.6% in September but has rapidly creeped up to 4.2%, erasing all the rate cut impact. The primary cause is the out-of-control public spending and the lack of confidence among bond investors in the government’s ability to manage its public finances. Therefore, it is logical that investors fear an inflation bounce.
The United States’ government is obsessed with doping GDP with government spending and bloating job figures with public sector hires. This is the road to ruin or stagflation.
On October 25, ABC News published the results of a survey of 2,392 registered voters where 44 percent of the respondents said that Donald Trump is a fascist, while 23 percent said that Kamala Harris is a fascist. There was even a 5 percent overlap between the two groups—respondents who characterized both Trump and Harris as fascists. Only 32 percent of the respondents thought that neither candidate is a fascist. Is America really in danger of turning fascist?
In the ever-evolving landscape of economic theory and policy, few concepts have been as influential and controversial as Joseph Schumpeter’s “creative destruction.” This powerful idea, which describes the process by which innovation continuously reshapes markets, challenges conventional wisdom about competition, monopolies, and the role of government intervention.
On his podcast “Verdict” November 13, Ted Cruz mentioned one of my favorite books by Ludwig von Mises: Bureaucracy. He mentioned it in reference to the “Department of Government Efficiency” that was also announced by President-elect Donald Trump on the same day. Cruz brings up a crucial point to the conversation surrounding this plan, pointing at Mises for getting it right.
Popular understandings of economics often attempt to incorporate the methodology of natural sciences as the supposed key to economics. Some economic experts are of the view that the methods employed by the natural sciences, such as advanced mathematics, are important tools for the assessments of historical data to establish the state of an economy. It is also believed that the knowledge secured from the assessment of the empirical data is likely to be tentative since it is not possible to know the true nature of reality.
[Editor’s note: In this article, originally published in October 1984, Murray Rothbard critiques a problem with the economics of Republicans and conservatives. Namely, its proponents think they can have it both ways by cutting tax rates and increasing government spending, while somehow not running up huge deficits. Much of this is based on the so-called Laffer curve idea, which Rothbard regards with skepticism.
In 2019 The New York Times launched their 1619 project, which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” In the NYT retelling of American history, black troops who fought for the Union in the 1861-65 war are to be commemorated, but black Confederates must be summarily erased. The aim of this article is to argue against this erasure of black Confederates.
Americans are outraged. Gas prices have risen over 30 percent in four years, electricity has risen by over 30 percent in the last four years, and groceries have risen by over 20 percent. This is infuriating and Americans are well in the right to be disgusted by it.
