What is it with economic illiteracy and writing in the media? One explanation is obvious: media need to sell newspapers (or get “clicks”), so it makes sense to exploit people’s confirmation bias. In other words, tell people what they want to hear. And, as we know, economics is that science that reveals that things aren’t the way they may first appear. In fact, the mechanisms behind the phenomena we observe are often the very opposite of what the untrained eye thinks that it sees.

When the southern states were debating secession in 1861, there was one other proposed secession that almost always gets overlooked in history: New York City. The Mayor of New York at the time, Fernando Wood, saw disunion as an inevitability at the start of 1861, and in a January 6th address to the city council, he advocated New York City’s secession.

Ex-Wharton student and WWE hall of famer, Donald J. Trump, is thinking $30 billion isn’t a large enough smackdown to those stealers of intellectual property (as if that’s a legitimate thing), the Chinese. Trump urged US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to aim bigly, warning those during the tariff powwow that they should prepare for an announcement during the coming weeks.

The Winter 2017 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics is now available online. The full archive of QJAE is available here. 

Volume 20, no. 4 (Winter 2017)

Articles:

In October 1962, I was given a lifetime advantage: a copy of Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State. In the language of journalism, it was hot off the presses. It had just been published. I was sent a copy by F. A. Harper, known as Baldy, who was not bald. At the time, he ran the Institute for Humane Studies. Until early that year, he had managed the William Voker Fund. The Volker Fund had put up the money that subsidized the publication of Rothbard’s book.

Politicians routinely assert that they want more economic growth. That’s a laudable sentiment, although I doubt their sincerity for the simple reason that these are the same people who frequently impose policies that discourage productive economic activity.

Paul Ryan’s retirement from Congress marks the end for one of the most prominent Republicans of his generation. Even before taking the role of Speaker of the House, Ryan had managed to become, in the words of Mitt Romney, the “intellectual leader” of the post-Bush GOP. Unfortunately Ryan’s story can be seen as nothing but a tragedy.

If Facebook disappeared forever this afternoon, I wouldn’t exactly be upset about it. I’m astounded when I see people post loads of personal information on the site, including posts about all their travel plans, their shopping habits, their daily routines, and their family members. Long is the list of people who have been harassed by law enforcement agencies or “child welfare” agencies in response to something they said or did on Facebook.

Mark Pulliam of Misrule of Law has written a touching tribute to Sylvester Petro, one of the great labor law scholars of the 20th century.