The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that Donald Trump cannot appear on the primary election ballot in the state. In a 4-3 decision, the judges in the majority claimed that Trump had been disqualified by his participation in the January 6 “insurrection.” The judges didn’t indicate in which court of law Trump had been convicted of such a charge. They could not do so, of course, since Trump has not even been charged with the crime of insurrection or anything similar. 

In 2022 economist Larry Summers predicted that inflation would only be brought down by an increase in the unemployment rate for a couple of years. Why? If workers expect high price inflation in the near future, they press for wage increases. Wage increases discourage employers from hiring . A low unemployment rate equilibrium requires a balance of financial interests, and common perceptions of economic conditions, between ordinary people and policymakers.

There are many reasons to support the breaking up states into smaller pieces. This is done via secession, and acts of secession produce smaller states. All else being equal, smaller states tend to be richer and they tend to have lower taxes. They tend to exercise less power over the resident population—because it’s easier for people to escape smaller states than larger ones.

Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality
by Angus Deaton
Princeton University Press, 2023; xiii + 273 pp.

Visions of Inequality: From the French Revolution to the End of the Cold War
by Branko Milanovic
Harvard Univerity Press, 2023; 359 pp.

Government-Managed Digital Currency: A Further Threat to Our Freedom

by Paul Gottfried

Whatever the modern self-described liberal democratic administrative state claims to be doing in the name of disadvantaged people is intended primarily and perhaps exclusively to increase government control. Further, whenever the same regime purports to be making our lives more comfortable, more agreeable, we may assume that our freedom and property rights are under assault.

Monetary Policy as Inflationism

Today all governments and central banks operate under the ideology of inflationism. The underlying principle of inflationism is that the quantity and purchasing power of money determined by the free market leads to deflation, recession, and unemployment in the economy. The inflationist ideology is therefore embedded in the very concept of monetary policy, which can be defined as an increase in the supply of money aimed at lowering the purchasing power below the level determined by market forces.