It sounds silly; a libertarian-left alliance on economics? It's almost like the wolf and the sheep allying on what’s for dinner. But hear me out. There’s a global political realignment in the works, and it’s clearly based on stopping the military-industrial complex,...
Economics
TGIF: The H-1B Controversy
by Sheldon Richman | Jan 17, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Does anyone still believe that the market process should set prices, including wages? Apparently not. Take the controversy surrounding the H-1B visa, the program that "permits" employers to hire highly educated and skilled foreign workers, such as hi-tech personnel....
Privatization (When It’s Not)
by Owen Ashworth | Jan 15, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles
For the first time in Royal Mail’s long history, stretching back to the 1500s, its owner will be based overseas. Daniel Kretinsky, a Czech billionaire, has acquired ownership over Royal Mail after a £3.6bn takeover. Royal Mail has been performing badly for years now...
Production Is Spiritual, Not Material
by Sheldon Richman | Jan 14, 2025 | Blog, Economics
"Production is not an act of creation; it does not bring about something that did not exist before. It is a transformation of given elements through arrangement and combination. The producer is not a creator. Man is creative only in thinking and in the realm of...
The Illusion of Wartime Prosperity
by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jan 14, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
That war is of benefit to the business of voluntary exchange to mutual benefit is, as one of the last British bearers of the classical liberal flame, Norman Angell, remarked in 1909, the great illusion. Certainly there were some industries that gained, such as the...
The Medicare Casino
by Thomas Eddlem | Jan 13, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles
Is Medicare a good program, financially speaking, for ordinary working people? Medicare Part A (the part that’s funded by payroll taxes) spent $394.6 billion in 2024 for the approximately sixty million of the over 65-years-of-age Americans on Medicare Part A (about...
TGIF: Efficient Bureaucracy?
by Sheldon Richman | Jan 10, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
With all the talk about government efficiency, it would be useful to remind ourselves why bureaucracies differ radically from for-profit businesses. Ludwig von Mises devoted a short but enlightening volume to this subject in 1944, Bureaucracy. Elon Musk and Vivek...
Competition Is Cooperation
by Sheldon Richman | Jan 4, 2025 | Blog, Economics
"The pricing process is a social process. It is consummated by an interaction of all members of the society. All collaborate and cooperate, each in the particular role he has chosen for himself in the framework of the division of labor. Competing in cooperation and...