We’ve all seen the memes: “You do not earn a billion dollars. You steal it. Nobody works a billion times harder than a nurse, a teacher or a farmer. That wealth comes from underpaying the people who actually did the work.” The other end of the spectrum is the slogan: “None of your problems are because someone else is a billionaire.” Or now, trillionaire. Both are equally untrue and just as economically ignorant. But perhaps the latter is even more strategically damaging to the future of a genuine free market. Elon Musk has taken in at least $38 billion in subsidies and federal contracts, not...

The greatest economic and political study of fascism, published by classical liberal journalist John T. Flynn at the height of World War II, is perhaps the best and most concise summary of America’s economic system today. The thesis of As We Go Marching (1944) states in part: “Fascism…is a form of social organization...(1) In which the government acknowledges no restraint upon its powers—totalitarianism. (2) In which this unrestrained government is managed by a dictator—the leadership principle. (3) In which the government is organized to operate the capitalist system and enable it to...

If you were to double the money in circulation instantly, society as a whole would be no richer. Printing more zeros on the currency does nothing to produce more of the necessities and luxuries of life. But wage earners would see the purchasing power of their wages gradually cut by half (at least until they bargained to raise them up to where they were again) as the new money goes into circulation. How long would it take workers to bargain back their wages? In 2020-2021, the Federal Reserve Bank increased the money supply by 40% (about 2/5ths of the above scenario) and according to the...

John Stossel is on a constant mission to tell Millennials and Zoomers that they’ve got it way better than their parents ever did.  Stossel breathlessly tells us in an October 1 Reason magazine article, "Today, Americans actually spend a smaller percentage of our money on food, clothing, and housing than we used to, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics survey data.” Well, that is how it’s supposed to be under a free market economy. But is our economy a free market? And are young people spending less? It depends a lot on how you slice the data. Every aspect of the Facebook post above, which...

In the 2006 Mike Judge movie Idiocracy, the dumbed-down human population five-hundred years into the future have replaced water in drinking fountains with the salty sports drink “Brawndo,” and have even begun to water farm crops with Brawndo. Facing a nationwide famine as a result of repeatedly salting the crop fields, time-traveling twenty-first century slacker Joe Bauers suggests that the future-world dimwits use water for the crops rather than Brawndo. “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave,” the dimwitted White House advisors reply, echoing the official corporate marketing line repeatedly,...