There is productive consumption and there is non-productive consumption. In the Keynesian mind, it's not necessary to produce anything, so long as people spend and consume endlessly, even to the point of destroying real wealth.
Experts who predicted economic doom as Brexit approached obsessed over the problem of "transaction costs" in trade. But the EU was imposing countless new transaction costs of its own.
Taxpayers are paying the disability pension of a "disabled" former cop who works full-time for the FBI and is classified as being in "excellent physical condition."
All arguments in favor of mandatory service rest on the idea that an individual's life belongs not to him- or herself, but to the state.
In a large enough democracy, the impact of an individual vote is statistically zero on the margin.
Central banks have done nothing to end the boom-and-bust cycle. Instead, their unscrupulous interventions in credit markets just prolong the boom. But it's a huge mistake to assume that bringing market interest rates to zero will create a perpetual boom.
How can paternalists say that when they make it more difficult for you to smoke they aren’t interfering with your freedom? They've come up with a bizarre rationale.
The Fed's balance sheet has risen to $4.1 trillion from $3.7 trillion in August. Nomi Prins discusses what this policy shift means and what it portends for 2020.
Uncritically holding democracy out as an ideal overlooks the question of whether market democracy or political democracy better serves citizens.
The task that civil rights laws were meant to carry out—the top-down management of various ethnic, regional, and social groups—had always been the main task of empires. The US now imposes this both domestically and globally.
