On July 21, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called for a full review of the Federal Reserve system. He said on CNBC’s Squawk Box, “I think what we need to do is examine the entire Federal Reserve institution and whether they have been successful.” It’s a completely...
Economics
Industrial Capitalism and Its Critics
by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jul 28, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, History
The nineteenth century marked the most dramatic leap forward in human welfare ever witnessed. It was a century defined not by aristocrats or emperors, but by coal, cotton, contracts, and capitalists. In his lectures “War, Peace, and the Industrial Revolution” and “The...
TGIF: What Is Capitalism?
by Sheldon Richman | Jul 25, 2025 | Economics, History, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
So, what is capitalism? The answer will depend on who's being asked. Language, like markets, basic law, and customs, is a spontaneous order. No one plans it. Words drift in their meaning in ways that probably can’t be fully explained. Language is a tool that people...
Domestic Militarization is Trump’s Economic Plan
by Matt Wolfson | Jul 24, 2025 | Criminal Justice, Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
If spending on war is the politically easiest way to juice an economy, then the smoothest applications for this spending are wars at home, the easiest to begin and to control. This is why, at an accelerating rate since the 1990s, America’s government has waged wars...

TGIF: Immigration and Free Association
by Sheldon Richman | Jul 18, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Immigration. Despite other headline-grabbing news, this issue persists. How could it not? Trump's masked goon squad, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), abducts peaceful people off the streets, from their workplaces, and from Home Depot parking lots, then...

If We Taxed Billionaires, Could We Balance the Budget?
by Thomas Eddlem | Jul 16, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles
Everyone who has heard a Democratic politician speak in the last decade has heard the mantra, “We can balance the budget (or fund a pet new social program) if we just make the billionaires pay their fair share of taxes.” So let’s see what it would look like. Let’s...

‘New Deal Economics’ Gets Knocked Out Cold
by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jul 10, 2025 | Book Reviews, Economics, Featured Articles
George Selgin’s False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, newly published by the University of Chicago Press, is a welcome contribution to the revisionist and post-revisionist literature on the legacy of the New Deal. While traditional historiographies of...
Can You Privatize the Military-Industrial Complex?
by Casey Carlisle | Jul 3, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism
Though it’s rare to hear someone praise the military-industrial-congressional complex, it is only the latter component that masks a praiseworthy feat. Markets—also known as “people” voluntarily exchanging—have devised the most efficient methods for producing weapons...