U.S. History

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Robert Higgs
Ordinary people, and sometimes experts as well, tend to overreact to short-term economic changes.
Eric C. Graf

ABSTRACT: Juan de Mariana may have had more direct lines of influence on the contemporary political denunciation of central banking in the United States than previously thought. As the culmination of a series of monetary theorists of the School of Salamanca, Mariana’s genius was his ability to synthesize and articulate a critique of the inflationary monetary policies of the Spanish Habsburgs. Furthermore, the Jesuit scholar linked his economic analysis to his equally scandalous endorsement of regicide. For their part, both the monetary policy concerns and the rebellious animus of the modern libertarian wing of American politics echo Thomas Jefferson’s views during the early Republic. These views also likely owe something to Mariana’s uniquely menacing confrontations with the Habsburgs. And thanks to the Virginian’s lifelong appreciation of Miguel de Cervantes’s great novel Don Quijote, which was itself heavily influenced by Mariana, the fascinating connections between Jefferson’s and Mariana’s politicized understandings of money are even further intertwined.

John P. Cochran

The drop in gas prices has left households with a little extra money to spend. So naturally, the state thinks it's a great time to raise gas taxes. Otherwise, taxpayers would just waste that money on their families.

Ryan McMaken

Supporters of embargoes like the Cuban embargo have never made a convincing case for why taxpayers, merchants, and consumers should be forced to forego their property rights and bear the costs of the embargo’s war on free trade.

Allen Mendenhall

Designed to redress the wrongs of the major injustice of slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment is now used by the federal courts to micromanage nearly every aspect of modern life. Strangely, many libertarians continue to support the amendment in spite of this.