James Grant proposes that the last time US government did not prescribe the now standard cure for economic slumps consisting of fiscal stimulus and easy money was the downturn of 1920–1921. Grant’s purpose is to test the efficacy of this medicine by checking what happened when it was not administered.
In California, the price of water is set by politicians, and not by markets, so that cheap water benefits some interest groups over others. It should now surprise no one that the state is in the midst of a water crisis.
Jeff Deist and Adam Vass Gal discuss why the State is a villain of the downtrodden.
The Fed and Washington politicians tell us how well the economy is doing, but the problems of the last financial crisis remain, and if we look closer, we find stagnant wages, ageing equipment, and lenders looking to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
“So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.” (Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower, 1967)
The weak dollar was a subsidy for the oil industry, but as Hazlitt noted, they make “the industries in which we are comparatively inefficient larger, and the industries in which we are comparatively efficient smaller.”
George Kateb's new book, Lincoln's Political Thought, is an important addition to Lincoln scholarship. Kateb appears to understand that Lincoln was more of a nationalist than a moral crusader, although Kateb's conclusions about the Civil War inspire skepticism.
Adam Vass Gall discusses his recent book: Generational Poverty: An Economic Look at the Culture of the Poor.
