America’s Loud But Ineffective Socialists

America’s Loud But Ineffective Socialists

There was already a great deal of consternation among the rightwing due to the election of socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City and socialist Katie Miller as mayor of Seattle. The volume of warnings got higher after NYC Democrats gave primary victories to three socialist candidates this summer. But on closer inspection, it appears to be Much Ado about Nothing. The political platform and electoral strategy of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) represent a fundamental departure from the traditional economic and political consensus of the United States. Because DSA...

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Democratic Socialists of America: Everything Old Is New Again

Democratic Socialists of America: Everything Old Is New Again

"The idea that deficits don't matter as long as you have your own currency is just wrong. In a world of scarce resources, someone always pays.”- N. Gregory Mankiw Some are calling recent political events America’s “socialist moment," as many libertarians have been predicting for a generation that this surge would occur. The current "socialist moment" is not a sudden ideological rupture, but the inevitable consequence of a century of institutional erosion driven by a bloated interventionist state. For decades, the federal government has systematically distorted the market through central bank...

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The Economic Morality of Rotisserie Chicken

The Economic Morality of Rotisserie Chicken

I am far from your typical, mainstream economist. Rather than focus on the broad aggregates that the state publishes in an effort to convince us that things are “just fine,” I choose to observe economic conditions at the most micro of levels. While my colleagues pour over numbers with initials like GDP, CPI, and PPI I prefer instead to review localized indicators through the observation of human behavior. One way I do that is to walk grocery aisles and watch how people react to prices. The result can often be odd, maybe “off-putting," or just plain weird. But it also presents me with a...

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The High Price of Free Speech

The High Price of Free Speech

In 399 B.C., Socrates chose to drink hemlock and suffer a painful death rather than submit to the state and live a life devoid of critical examination. He would be horrified to see how close we have come to constructing his nightmare: a society willing to jettison free speech and embrace state-defined “safety” over the messy, painful, and necessary work of questioning why we believe what we believe.  The nation’s founders viewed freedom of speech and the press as essential to a free society. Not as privileges granted by the government, but as fundamental, pre-existing natural rights derived...

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