The year 1898 was a landmark in American history. It was the year America went to war with Spain—our first engagement with a foreign enemy in the dawning age of modern warfare. Aside from a few scant periods of retrenchment, we have been embroiled in foreign politics ever since.
Below is a letter to the editor I just sent in to The Economist in response to a pro-patent piece. I doubt they will publish it, but here it is.
***
Aggregates mean nothing to me, an acting man — an individual.
Regardless of what the politicized aggregates say, my market basket tells my story — a story of inflation.
In the past month: gas at my favored station is up 12%, with my desired in-store candy bar up 13%; milk at the convenient corner drugmart is up 16%; and my self-proclaimed fiscally conservative neighbors voted to raise my property taxes 20%.
That’s my market basket.
The fact is that it is their money pumping that is driving both GDP growth and commodities prices — but not the real economy.
[Excerpted from “Caging the Dogs of War,” Independent Review 13 (2), Fall 2008).]
[Excerpted from “Regime Uncertainty,” The Independent Review 1 (4), Spring 1997.]
Francis Fukuyama, whose recent book is fatally flawed by his presumption that political orders build society, reviews Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty in the New York Times without giving the reader much evidence that he actually read the book. For one thing, he critiques Hayek as if Hayek was a consistent Rothbardian.
While the talking heads on financial TV continue to spout the idea that the economy is improving, the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey reveals that Americans are suffering, with 80% saying the economy is poor.
