Ryan McMaken | The Libertarian Institute

The Conservative Attack on Market Freedom

by Ryan McMaken | Oct 14, 2019 | Economics, Featured Articles

I haven't run an empirical study on the number of articles published, but it sure seems like conservatives are writing more articles than usual condemning economic freedom, and the people who advocate for it. This would make some sense in the Age of Trump when the the president has pushed the right's policy agenda more in the direction of protectionism and runaway federal spending that makes the Obama Administration look almost fiscally responsibly by comparison. The right wing no longer talks about cuts to social spending. Deficit spending is nearing all-time highs. Perhaps not...

Homicides in the US Fall for Second Year as Murder Rate Drops in 38 States

by Ryan McMaken | Oct 8, 2019 | Featured Articles

As 2018 came to an end, politicians and media pundits insisted that " gun violence " was growing and hitting crisis levels . While a homicide rate of anything greater than zero is an measure of very-real human misery, it nonetheless turns out that fewer people were murdered in 2018 than in the year before. Moreover, 2018 was the second year in a row during which the homicide rate declined. According to new homicide statistics released by the FBI last month, the homicide rate in the United States was 5 per 100,000 people. That was down from 5.3 per 100,000 in 2017 and down from 5.4 in 2016....

Greta Thunberg To Poor Countries: Drop Dead

by Ryan McMaken | Sep 27, 2019 | Economics, Featured Articles

On Monday, celebrity climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered a speech to the UN Climate Action summit in New York. Thunberg demanded drastic cuts in carbon emissions of more than 50 percent over the next ten years. It is unclear to whom exactly she was directing her comments, although she also filed a legal complaint with the UN on Monday, demanding five countries (namely Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey) more swiftly adopt larger cuts in carbon emissions. The complaint is legally based on a 1989 agreement, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, under which Thunberg claims...

The Trillion-Dollar Military Still Isn’t Enough for the War Party

by Ryan McMaken | Sep 17, 2019 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism

Since the end of the Cold War in 1990, US defense spending has increased 182 percent in nominal terms, and 44 percent in inflation-adjusted terms. In inflation-adjusted terms, defense spending is now about equal with the all-time peak reached in 2011, and the White House's Office of Management and Budget estimates that defense spending will reach an all-time high in 2020. Source: Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, Table 3.2. In 2018 dollars, defense spending hit approximately $942,198 — which includes "homeland defense" spending and spending on veterans. It can soon be...

If Deficits Are This Huge Now, What Happens When the Recession Hits?

by Ryan McMaken | Aug 20, 2019 | Featured Articles, Politics

The Treasury Department released new budget deficit numbers this week, and with two months still to go in the fiscal year, 2019's budget deficit is the highest its been since the US was still being flooded with fiscal stimulus dollars back in 2012. As of July 2019, the year-to-date budget deficit was 866 billion dollars. The last time it was this high was the 2012 fiscal year when the deficit reached nearly 1.1 trillion dollars. At the height of the recession-stimulus-panic, the deficit had reached 1.4 trillion in 2009. (The 2019 deficit is year-to-date): What is especially notable about the...

There’s No Correlation Between Gun Ownership, Mass Shootings, and Murder Rates

by Ryan McMaken | Aug 4, 2019 | Featured Articles, Politics

While I was fact checking today's Mises Daily article, I checked some correlation coefficients of my own so I didn't have to rely on Volokh's numbers as my only source. I approached the data a little differently than Volokh did and instead of using a subjective ranking by an organization like the Brady organization, I just looked at the rate of gun ownership in the state. After all, the argument is often that more guns and more gun owners leads to more violence. So, I looked at the correlation between the gun ownership rate (a percentage on the x axis) and the murder rate (n per 100,000 on...

US Immigration Enforcement: Guilty Until Proven Innocent

by Ryan McMaken | Jul 11, 2019 | Featured Articles, Politics

In the United States, the legal system is supposed to begin with a presumption of innocence. If the government suspects someone of wrongdoing, it is up to the government to prove wrongdoing. The burden of proof lies with government agents. But that's not how the immigration system works. When someone is detained by immigration agents, it is up to the suspect to prove he is not a criminal. Otherwise, the suspect may be held for long periods without due process, or even deported. And we shouldn't kid ourselves by thinking only foreign nationals get caught up in this system. Since the only...

Money-Supply Growth Remained Sluggish in May

by Ryan McMaken | Jun 28, 2019 | Featured Articles, Politics

Money supply growth inched up in May, rising slightly above March's and April's growth levels. But overall growth levels remain quite low compared to growth rates experienced from 2009 to 2016. March's growth rate, for examples, was at a 12-year (145-month) low. In May, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 2.21 percent. That was up from April's growth rate of 2.00 percent. May 2019's growth rate was well down from May 2018's rate of 4.19 percent. The money-supply metric used here — the "true" or Rothbard-Salerno money supply measure (TMS) — is the metric developed by Murray...