Industrial Policy? Try Competition and Entrepreneurship Instead
One of the most significant economic achievements of the past fifty years has been the radical diminishment of extreme poverty. Between 1990 and 2018 alone, those in extreme poverty (defined as someone living on less than 1.90 international dollars a day) fell from 1.9 billion (36% of the world’s population) to 650 million (about 7%). The pace and scale of this decline is unparalleled in human history. Granted, there are outliers to this ...
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Then Why Not Compensate Also the Losers from Tariff HIKES?
(Don Boudreaux)
TweetI had occasion yesterday to search for a link to a paper of mine, and in my search I discovered a weeks-old email from an occasional correspondent. (In this paper I argue that no compensation is owed to workers who lose incomes as a result of a freeing of trade.)
Mr. L__:
Thanks for your late January e-mail, and please forgive me for finding it only now. I apologize for the tardiness of my reply.
You ask, in response to ...
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How Government Regulation Makes Housing Unafforable
For a 1,000 square foot apartment—smaller than many cities allow without expensive variance permit processes—a developer would need to charge at least $2,750 per month just to break even.
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Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Capitalism
The New Yorker has a David Remnick interview with Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard professor, New Yorker contributor, and eminent scholar of Afro-American studies: because my dad worked two jobs—in the daytime, at the paper mill, and then as a janitor
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Inflation is a Crime. YOU’RE the Victim.
After two years of “flattening the curve”, America’s pandemic response has resulted in the flattening of wallets. An unprecedented amount of money printing has sent prices skyrocketing, and Americans trying to get their lives “back to normal” are experiencing anything but. Surprisingly, Amazon’s new “Reacher” series can teach us a lot about our inflationary woes. At the end of the day, the counterfeiting criminals in Reacher are ...
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On Human Responsibility
We denizens of modernity overestimate ourselves. As individuals, we are not close to being as intelligent, as reasonable, or as capable as we suppose ourselves to be.
Our overestimation of our abilities is understandable. Every day of our lives we see automobiles whiz by, hear jetliners soar overhead, and enjoy the convenience and cleanliness of indoor plumbing, electrification, and artificial lighting. When we pause to notice, we marvel at ...
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Stone Age Anti-Capitalism - HumanProgress
The free market, or, to use a more loaded term, capitalism, produces more wealth and higher standards of living than any other economic system that humanity has conceived and implemented. The differences in economic performance between South and North Korea, West and East Germany, Chile and Venezuela, Botswana and Zimbabwe, not to mention the United States and the Soviet Union, speak for themselves. In spite of that generally recognized fact, ...
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Both Sides: The Free Market
RICHARD WOLFF ON THE FREE MARKET
MILTON FRIEDMAN – FREE MARKET EXCHANGE
AVAILABLE RESOURCES
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The ‘Adam Smith of the North': Meet Finland's Founding Father of Classical Liberalism
He explained the concept of spontaneous order 11 years before Adam Smith wrote about it in "The Wealth of Nations."
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Africa Tries Free Trade - HumanProgress
Economic nationalism has plagued Africa since decolonization. In 2021, that is set to change.
On January 1, the long-awaited African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) came into effect. Aside from the economic benefits that the arrangement will bring to the continent, Africa’s newfound support for free trade and liberalization marks a clear rejection of the socialist ideology that has tormented African politics for decades.
As it stands, ...
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Michael Eisenberg on the Start-Up Nation, Storytelling, and the Power of Technology
Michael Eisenberg, venture capitalist and the author of The Tree of Life and Prosperity talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the secret of the Start-Up Nation, the role of principles in investing, and why he's optimistic about technology's contribution to humanity.
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‘There’s No Free Lunch’: A New ‘Daily Devotional’
"I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money." – Thomas Sowell
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Government Bans on GMOs Are Making Global Hunger Worse—and Do Serious Harm to the Planet
The controversy over genetically modified organisms is a classic "bootleggers and Baptists" story.
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Capital v Labor: The Great Decoupling
This article explores the concept of the Great Decoupling, or the supposed discrepancy between increased labor productivity and higher worker wages. Prior to 1970, increases in labor productivity translated into wage increases, just as economic theory dictates. However, it appears that since the 1970s, wages have barely increased or have increased much slower than productivity. What is the reason for this? The Great Decoupling: Wages Are Not ...
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The World's Poorest People Are Getting Richer Faster than Anyone Else | Alexander Hammond
Last Tuesday marked the 25th anniversary of the United Nations’ International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The date intentionally coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Call to Action, which saw the French anti-poverty campaigner Father Joseph Wresinski ask the international community, in front of 100,000 Parisians, to “strive to eradicate extreme poverty”.
To mark the occasion, Antonio Guterres, the United Nations ...
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Opinion | Wealth Is Knowledge
The stock-market carnage came fast and furious, wrecking GameStop -like memes and get-rich-quick crypto schemes and cracking SPACs. The ringleader, Robinhood, fueled by stimulus checks, is a good proxy for the excess. Its stock is down almost 80% from its August peak. It is a fine time to ask: What is wealth? Is it Justin Bieber dropping $1.3 million on a Bored Ape Yacht Club nonfungible token? Ha! More important, how do you keep wealth?
How ...
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Thomas Piketty’s “Time for Socialism”
Capitalism enables some people to get rich faster than others and to Piketty that’s intolerable.
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The Book to Read if You Want to Understand Inflation
Why is inflation suddenly surging?
This new book can help you understand what's happening.
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A Slam Dunk For Freedom
For more than a century, the NCAA has operated as both a cartel and a communist government, suppressing the earning power of top athletes in major sports and forcing them to subsidize smaller sports. A one-month basketball tournament, for example — March Madness — funds entire seasons of travel, meals, equipment, and training for entire teams in sports like field hockey. But the Supreme Court’s ruling in June (though a narrow one) has ...
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FAVORITES
Is life today bad? Or is it awesome? “Economics Made the World Great” shows changes that have taken place in the past three centuries that have made the world better. Can it be better still?
Jon Favreau’s heartwarming 2014 independent film, “Chef”, is a case study in entrepreneurial value creation. Even better, it shows us how we can achieve economic success and personal fulfillment simultaneously, provided that we figure out how to take our passions and turn them towards making other people’s lives better.
Magatte Wade was born in Senegal but spent much of her childhood in France. Growing up, she saw the extreme differences in wealth between Africa and Europe. This disparity sparked a question… Why are some countries rich, and others poor?
How do we summarize the 2010s? Many think it was an awful decade, ten years of horror, unfair distribution and environmental disaster.
It’s a Wonderful Loaf is an ode to the hidden harmony that is all around us–the seeming magical ways that we anticipate and meet the needs of each other without anyone being in charge.