Rothbard Explains The Failure of the “New Economics”

In the twentieth century, wrote Murray Rothbard, the most influential economist was John Maynard Keynes, who swept the world of economics like an avalanche in 1936 with his General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, his teachings quickly becoming a new, entrenched economic orthodoxy. Henry Hazlitt, in this vitally important and desperately needed book, throws down the challenge in a detailed, thoroughgoing refutation. Keynes’s General Theory is here riddled chapter by chapter, line by line, with due account taken of the latest theoretical developments. The complete refutation of a vast network of fallacy can only be accomplished by someone thoroughly grounded in a sound positive theory. Henry Hazlitt has that groundwork.

The Market Gives Privilege to No One

Jerry Kirkpatrick discusses institutions such as “bankers’ hours.” Such privileges are a remnant of aristocratic life, special enjoyments granted due to birth or rank in society. Today, the rank stems directly from bureaucratic intrusions into the marketplace. Its key trait is that it is unearned, making the holder of the rank exempt from competition. Regulations restrict a portion of the market to the exclusive enjoyment of those protected at the expense of those who are not so protected. Sometimes, those enjoying this rank exhibit aristocratic arrogance

Old-age Security Without the State

Social security systems around the developed world are faced with a looming financing crisis. Unfunded pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) schemes are heading towards bankruptcy due to rising longevities, low fertility, and declining labor force participation rates.

Much of this is not accidental. Compulsory PAYGO schemes tend to discourage work in older ages and penalize larger families. Thus they contribute to their own bankruptcy.

War on Liquor Not Working

According to the NYT: “Despite the military’s ban on all alcoholic beverages [in Iraq and Afghanistan] — and strict Islamic prohibitions against drinking and drug use — liquor is cheap and ever easier to find for soldiers looking to self-medicate the effects of combat stress, depression or the frustrations of extended deployments, said military defense lawyers, commanders and doctors who treat soldiers’ emotional problems....

The Original American Foreign Policy

From Ron Paul’s historic new book: Noninterventionism is not isolationism. Nonintervention simply means America does not interfere militarily, financially, or covertly in the internal affairs of other nations. It does not mean that we isolate ourselves; on the contrary, our founders advocated open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations. Thomas Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.” Washington similarly urged that we must, “Act for ourselves and not for others,” by forming an “American character wholly free of foreign attachments.”

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