Justin Lahart with the Wall Street Journal wrestles with the definition of inflation in his article “Using a Dictionary to Define Inflation Can Spell Trouble”. Lahart writes that up until 2003, Webster’s defined inflation as “printing money”. Since the 2003 edition, Webster’s defines inflation as “a continuing rise in the general price level.”
When it comes to proponents of Keynesian economics, none has a broader stage or influence than Paul Krugman. For almost a decade now, Krugman has used his New York Times column to promote both Keynesian economic policy and the Democratic Party’s agenda, as well as to mock opposing economic theories such as the Austrian business-cycle theory (which he labeled the “hangover theory” in his infamous Slate article from 1998).
In response to Friday’s Forbes article, a friend asked how we would all be better off if the washerwoman who has higher earnings as a result of the minimum wage takes a pay cut. The employment effect of a minimum wage is a classic example of the law of unintended consequences and Frederic Bastiat’s insights about the seen and the unseen.
[Anything That’s Peaceful (1964)]
The practice of committees, boards, or councils presuming to represent the views of vast constituencies occurs in educational and religious associations, in trade and commercial organizations — indeed, in any segment of society where there is the propensity to organize.
The libertarian movement has been chided by William F. Buckley, Jr., for failing to use its “strategic intelligence” in facing the major problems of our time. We have, indeed, been too often prone to “pursue our busy little seminars on whether or not to demunicipalize the garbage collectors” (as Buckley has contemptuously written), while ignoring and failing to apply libertarian theory to the most vital problem of our time: war and peace.
The public loves the fall of a ruthless and greedy financial titan — this, of course, is what made Oliver Stone’s original Wall Street such a hit. But the practice of “insider trading” can actually be beneficial. In a free society, there would be no such thing as laws against so-called insider trading.
