Ryan McMaken | The Libertarian Institute

To Fight the State, Build Alternatives to the State

by Ryan McMaken | Mar 29, 2023 | Featured Articles

Throughout its history, liberalism—the ideology today called “classical liberalism” or “libertarianism”—has suffered from the impression that it is primarily against things. This is not entirely wrong. Historically, liberalism coalesced as a recognizable and coherent ideology in opposition largely to mercantilism and absolutism throughout Western Europe. Over time, this opposition extended to socialism, protectionism, imperialism, aggressive warfare, and slavery as well. In this regard, liberals have for centuries fought against a wide array of moral and economic evils that spread poverty,...

Real Estate Markets Are Addicted to Easy Money

by Ryan McMaken | Mar 8, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles

On Friday, residential real estate brokerage firm Redfin released new data on home prices, showing that prices fell 0.6 percent in February, year over year. According to Redfin's numbers, this was the first time that home prices actually fell since 2012. The year-over-year drop was pulled down by especially large declines in five markets: Austin (-11%), San Jose, California (-10.9%), Oakland (-10.4%), Sacramento (-7.7%), and Phoenix (-7.3%). According to Redfin, the typical monthly mortgage payment is now at a record high of $2,520. The Redfin numbers come a few days new numbers from...

Copyright Laws Are Enabling Woke ‘Re-Writes’ of Classics

by Ryan McMaken | Feb 28, 2023 | Featured Articles

The estate of Roald Dahl this month announced that it would be rewriting many of the long-dead author’s books to better suit a “modern” audience. Translation: The books will be rewritten so the text is more in line with the editors’ notions of politically correct language. As a parent of four children, I’ve read my share of Roald Dahl books over the years, although I wouldn’t consider myself an especially big fan. Yet it’s hard to imagine what is so “offensive” in a Roald Dahl book that it needs to be rewritten. The Dahl books are not comparable to the original editions of, say, the Nancy...

Part-Time Employment is Growing Faster than Full-Time Employment

by Ryan McMaken | Feb 8, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles

The Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) released new jobs data on Friday. According to the report, seasonally adjusted total nonfarm jobs rose 517,000 jobs, which was well above expectations. The words used by the media to describe the report included “stunner” and “wow.” President Joe Biden claimed the number proves his administration has delivered economic prosperity. The administration has also noted that in the official numbers, the unemployment rate is at a multidecade low. This, Biden and his supporters insist, proves the economy is remarkably strong. There are at least a few things going...

Your Social Security Money Is GONE, Understand?

by Ryan McMaken | Feb 2, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles

After French protestors took the street to complain about the increase in the retirement age, I read quite a few jokes in social media about how protesting in France is the local pastime. That may be true, but let it not be said that Americans don't feel very, very strongly about their own national pension program. I say this because in response to my article last week on raising the Social Security age, I received more furious responses than I have for any other article in many years. Here's one example from a man whose initials are MF: What are you, just nuts??? Having paid in to SS for...

Does the Death of the Petrodollar Signal the End of the U.S. Empire?

by Ryan McMaken | Feb 1, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy

On January 17, the Saudi minister of finance, Mohammed Al-Jadaan, announced that the Saudi state is open to selling oil in currencies other than the dollar. “There are no issues with discussing how we settle our trade arrangements, whether it is in the U.S. dollar, whether it is the euro, whether it is the Saudi riyal,” Al-Jadaan told Bloomberg TV. If the Saudi regime does indeed embrace substantial trade in currencies other than the dollar as part of its oil-export business, this would signal a shift away from the dollar as the dominant currency in global oil payments. Or measured another...

Price Inflation Slows, But the Economy Keeps Getting Worse

by Ryan McMaken | Jan 26, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released new Producer Price Index (PPI) data on Wednesday, and it looks like the rate of increase in price inflation is slowing. Nonetheless, year-over-year price inflation in December remained near 40-year highs, and shows the marketplace is still dealing with the nearly six-trillion-dollar surge in the money supply that took place during 2020 and 2021. The PPI is a measure of prices at the production phase of goods and services. Prior to 1978, the index was known as the Wholesale Price Index. In December, year-over-year PPI growth came in at 6.2 percent...

The Idea of Making a ‘Trillion Dollar Coin’ Is Still Dumb

by Ryan McMaken | Jan 24, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles

Here we go again. Every few years in Congress there is a purely political battle over the debt ceiling. We're supposed to be horrified and worried that the U.S. might default on some of its debt. Some commentators will insist the U.S. has never defaulted, and that default be a disaster. (That's wrong, by the way. The U.S. has defaulted before.) But these debt ceiling debates always end the same way. Congress ends up increasing the debt ceiling and the U.S.'s national debt continues to spiral upward. During all the theatrics over the debt ceiling, however, many strange ideas are put forward...