The US’s “Free Trade” Isn’t Very Free
Whether we're talking about the Trump years or not, the idea that the United States embraces unconditional free trade at all costs—while being victimized by foreign protectionists—is based on fantasy.
Whether we're talking about the Trump years or not, the idea that the United States embraces unconditional free trade at all costs—while being victimized by foreign protectionists—is based on fantasy.
Everything you learned from family dinner conversations and your culture served to build your human capital. Across the globe, the people of various regions cultivate certain skills that enable individuals to consider entrepreneurship as a viable choice of work.
Henry Hazlitt cohosted the CBS series Longines Chronoscope from June 16, 1952. The series ran from 1951–55 and featured notable people of the time.
Markets are not the enemy of equality. Regulated markets are. The income inequality that naturally occurs in the free market as a result of human uniqueness is needlessly amplified by restrictive government policies to the detriment of all.
Most "free trade" agreements are really just ways to expand the regulatory state and rob the consumers of the benefits they might have gotten from actual free trade.
Michael Milken was a threat to the complacent Wall Street cartels established by the New Deal. So ambitious prosecutors like Rudy Giuliani saw an opportunity to get in good with Wall Street by taking him down.
Buttigieg's plan to repopulate depressed rural areas with immigrants reminds one of old Soviet schemes to ship people to Siberia to stimulate the economy there.
In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world adopted new “tools” to influence economic activity in addition to its standard open market operations.
Because banks make unbacked "loans," they create new money that later disappears when repaid. If these loans are not renewed, economic depression sets in.
Economics today poses as a predictive discipline which fails to correctly predict anything; a prescriptive discipline which prescribes the wrong policies; and an empirical discipline which collects data but misses the point.