"The conditions under which modern man of the capitalist West must act are different from those under which his primitive ancestors lived and acted. As a result of the providential care of our forebears we have at our disposal an ample stock of intermediate products...
Economics
The Vulnerable Capitalist
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 14, 2024 | Blog, Economics
"Popular literature attributes enormous 'power' to the capitalist and considers his owning a mass of capital goods as of enormous significance, giving him a great advantage over other people in the economy. We see, however, that this is far from the case; indeed, the...
TGIF: “Corporate” Is Not a Four-Letter Word
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 13, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, History, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
I rise today to protest the widespread and malicious use of the adjective corporate as a synonym for evil, corrupt, exploitative, or any number of other pejoratives. As a descriptor, corporate merely says that an association that makes or sells goods for profit is...
Natural Economic Law Can’t Be Repealed
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 12, 2024 | Blog, Economics
If the government restricts supply and subsidizes demand, out-of-control prices, resource shortages, and unpleasant ad hoc coping restrictions will follow. That is the natural (economic) law. The government cannot repeal it. But it can stop its attempt to plan.
The Health-Care Nirvana Fallacy
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 11, 2024 | Blog, Economics
Someone explain how coercive centralized bureaucratic control of medical decision-making and the purse can beat the decentralized free market with its undistorted price system. The government has many things besides medical care it wants to spend tax money on, and...
Time to Separate Medicine and State
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 10, 2024 | Blog, Economics
The "progressive" coverage of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson's murder has an unspoken premise: namely, that we could have had a system in which medical care was instantly superabundant and free for everyone. There is no such system. We live in a world of...
Sayonara, Paul Krugman
by William Anderson | Dec 9, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles
After spending twenty-five years as a columnist for The New York Times, Paul Krugman is finally retiring from that position—twenty-five years too late, if one wishes to be honest. It is hard to measure the influence he had from that perch, but his columns surely were...
We Can’t Consume Our Way to Prosperity
by Sheldon Richman | Dec 9, 2024 | Blog, Economics
Once upon a time, John Stuart Mill could write these words truthfully ("Of the Influence of Consumption on Production," 1844): It is no longer supposed that you benefit the producer by taking his money, provided you give it to him again in exchange for his goods. He...