Immediately after taking office, the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, signed a decree and reduced the number of ministries from twenty-two to nine. Although tens of thousands of public employees have been disposed of since then, the celebrated reduction is still symbolic, because it only ordered some ministries to absorb others and did not reduce public employment significantly. Milei has managed to achieve five budget surpluses so far. Public works have ceased to be financed to an important degree.

The most pervasive and prevalent aspect of government to the average American is the regulatory bureaucracy. Starting a business requires the acquisition of a license. Bureaucrats were given powers to create new legal requirements, accounting measures, and deviations from profit management. This was enabled by the law, through the delegation of powers by Congress to the bureaucrats, but also by the Supreme Court.

Many people argue in this way: The 1964 Civil Rights Act was fine. No one should be discriminated against because of his race or sex. Because blacks and women have suffered such discrimination in the past, it may be that programs like affirmative action are justified, at least temporarily. However, the purpose of these programs should be to promote equality of opportunity. Everybody deserves an equal chance to live a good life or, at any rate, a fair chance.

Last night, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump faced off in Atlanta in what’s supposed to be the first of two presidential debates. Each man had essentially one job. Trump needed to appear stable enough to counter the characterization his opponents have built up of an unhinged maniac who is dead set on tearing the country down to nurse the hit his ego suffered in 2020. And Trump did a perfectly good job at that. 

A long battle surrounding Julian Assange has finally come to an end. Founder of divisive group, Wikileaks, Julian would gain popularity in 2010 when helping former US soldier, Chelsea Manning uncover and spread evidence that the United States and Australia committed war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A quite-revealing speech about the future of the European Union was given in Brussels on April 16, 2024 by Mario Draghi, who at one time had been slated to become the next president of the EU Commission, replacing scandal-ridden Ursula von der Leyen, who recent

With the end of the twentieth century rapidly approaching, this is a time to look back and gain some perspective on where we stand as a nation. Were the Founding Fathers somehow to return, they would find it impossible to recognize our political system. The major cause of this transformation has been America’s involvement in war and preparation for war over the past hundred years. War has warped our constitutional order, the course of our national development, and the very mentality of our people.

A June 27 FOX News online headline announced that sixteen left-wing Nobel prize-winning economists had signed a petition declaring that if Donald Trump is elected there will be increased inflation, while praising “Bidenomics” to the treetops. Apart from the fact that there is no such thing as “Bidenomics” – which is nothing more than the usual wild vote buying from every special interest group imaginable funded by Fed monetization of more debt (and more inflation) – the petition is further evidence of the pathetic, politicized state of “mainstream” academic economics. 

About two years ago, I had a brief exchange with modern monetary theory (MMT) champion and Stony Brook University professor Stephanie Kelton on Twitter (now X). It resulted in Kelton publicly challenging me, an economist and tenured professor at another large public university, to formulate a critique of her (and MMT’s) “chartalist” view that government currency has value only because it must be used to pay taxes.