Economic Sanctions, State Power, and Cuba: A Rothbardian Critique of U.S. Interventionism

In 2019, the first Trump administration imposed many new sanctions against Cuba, including measures that targeted fuel shipments and raised the legal and financial penalties on foreign firms engaged in supplying fuel to the island. Consequently, the number of suppliers willing to service Cuba has declined, while those that continued to do business there have generally charged higher prices to compensate for the increased political and commercial risk. 

The Inflation Conflation: A Distinction Between Rising Prices and Money Printing

It is commonplace in American media and among so-called economists to conflate “inflation” with relative price increases. While changes in prices due to market volatility do add to the general calculations of price indexes, the conflation hides the true causes of increasing prices, leading to two nefarious outcomes. Misguided government policies and misinformed public perception.

The Cruel Irony of Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day. It’s a day when politicians like to give speeches praising the extraordinary courage and selflessness of America’s veterans and active-duty military personnel.

It’s also a day when American military history is often treated like a vague, homogeneous blob of sacrifice. But it’s worth getting a bit more specific.

We celebrate on November 11 because that’s the day, back in 1918, when World War I ended. It was famously the day when the guns fell silent at the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

No Amnesty, No Citizenship

Last Sunday, on the TV newsmagazine 60 Minutes, President Donald Trump told his interviewer that he’d like to work with the Democrats to pass legislation giving illegal aliens a path to legal status in the United States. In other words, Trump is now saying he favors making a deal to enact some sort of amnesty for illegal aliens.