The Free Market 6, no. 10 (October 1988)

On August 2, 1988, President Ronald Reagan announced that he had changed his mind about the pro-union plant-closing bill. He had vetoed it three months earlier, but now let it become law without his signature after intense pressure from presidential nominee George Bush and former Treasury Secretary James Baker, now Bush’s campaign chairman. Reagan claimed that only this action would enable him to sign a Congressional trade bill almost unequaled in its anti-consumer protectionism.

The Free Market 6, no. 10 (October 1988)

International statists have long dreamed of a world currency and a world central bank. Now it looks as if their dream may come true.

European governments have targeted 1992 for abolishing individual European currencies and replacing them with the European Currency Unit, the ECU. Next they plan to set up a European central bank. The next step is the merger of the Federal Reserve, the European central bank, and the Bank of Japan into one world central bank.

The Free Market 6, no. 12 (December 1988)

There is no clearer demonstration of the essential identity of the two political parties than their position on the minimum wage. The Democrats propose to raise the legal minimum wage from $3.35 an hour, to which it had been raised by the Reagan administration during its allegedly free-market salad days in 1981. The Republican counter was to allow a “subminimum” wage for teenagers, who, as marginal workers, are the ones who are indeed hardest hit by any legal minimum.

The Free Market 7, no. 1 (January 1989)

One of the ironic but unfortunately enduring legacies of eight years of Reaganism has been the resurrection of Keynesianism. From the late 1930s until the early 1970s, Keynesianism rode high in the economics profession and in the corridors of power in Washington, promising that, so long as Keynesian economists continued at the helm, the blessings of modern macroeconomics would surely bring us permanent prosperity without inflation. Then something happened on the way to Eden: the mighty inflationary recession of 1973–74.

The Free Market 7, no. 2 (February 1989)

A roar, a shudder, and the end of the world. That was Soviet Armenia on December 7th when the great earthquake struck. Whole cities disappeared, as nurseries and factories, offices and homes, collapsed into rubble. In a few moments, more than 55,000 men, women, and children were crushed to death.

But no matter what seemed to be the cause, these people weren’t victims of geologic forces; they were casualties of socialism.

The Free Market 7, no. 3 (March 1989)

A Free Market Breakthrough

by Jeffrey M. Herbener

The Free Market 7, no. 4 (April 1989)

Q. When is a tax not a tax?

The Free Market 7, no. 5 (May 1989)

Any business owner whose employees deliberately set out to harass and even endanger customers could do only one thing: fire the offenders, and maybe sue them for damages as well. Nothing else would be compatible with free-enterprise and private property. But thanks to a whole host of government interventions, unionized companies like Eastern Airlines cannot take the actions that morality and economics would dictate.

The Free Market 7, no. 6 (June 1989)

The broadly held corporation was one of the most important developments of the 19th century. The capital of thou­sands and then millions of stockholders made possible the profitable development of large firms, which enriched not only their owners, but society as a whole.

The railroads were the first to develop this mass-based ownership. They were also the first to develop the unfortunate management-government collaboration that has done so much to harm customers and stockholders.

The Free Market 7, no. 6 (June 1989)

Quick: what do the following world-famous men have in common: John Kenneth Galbraith, Donald J. Trump, and David Rockefeller? What values could possibly be shared by the socialist economist who got rich by writing best-selling volumes denouncing affluence; the billionaire wheeler-dealer; and the fabulous head of the financially and politically powerful Rockefeller World Empire?