Negotiations over increasing the federal debt ceiling continue in Washington. As has occurred several times over the past twenty years, Republicans and Democrats are presently using increases in the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip in negotiating how federal tax...
Economics

TGIF: No One Has a Right to Make Immigration Policy
by Sheldon Richman | May 19, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says "no one has a right to immigrate" to the United States. "We determine as Americans," he says, "what type of immigration system benefits our country. When you're doing immigration, it's not for their benefit as foreigners. It's for your...

Bernie Sanders Is Angry About Wealth
by Trenton Hale | May 17, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Politics
Bernie is at it again folks. Recently, the Democratic senator proposed that the government confiscate all the money that a person makes above $999 million. This came about from an interview with Chris Wallace discussing his new book, It’s OK to Be Angry About...

TGIF: Ducking Hayek
by Sheldon Richman | May 12, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
May 8 marked the 124th anniversary of the birth of F. A. Hayek, the 1974 Nobel-winning economist of the Austrian school. (He died in 1992.) That makes it a good time to acknowledge one of his many contributions, his epistemic case for the free and competitive market...
TGIF: Abolish Billionaires?
by Sheldon Richman | May 5, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to abolish billionaires. You read that right. He says he'd confiscate 100 percent of people's money above the $999 million mark -- as if that would cover a significant portion of the nearly $7 trillion the feds will spend in the next fiscal...
Blackrock’s Balance Sheet May Be Sicker Than You Think
by Tom Luongo | May 3, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
The big news this week was Tucker Carlson’s unceremonious firing by Fox News. The reasons for Tucker’s firing are still unclear. And even Tucker’s emergence from his man cave on Tuesday for two minutes did nothing to quell the speculation. What it did do was...
Debt Ceiling Drama Ignores Our Real Fiscal Crisis
by Ron Paul | May 2, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles
Last week the House passed legislation increasing the debt ceiling. The bill was supported by all but four Republicans. For some Republicans, this was the first time they had ever voted for a debt ceiling increase. Perhaps the reason they did so this time was because...
TGIF: Free Markets and the Pursuit of Happiness
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 28, 2023 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
For some time now I've thought that many people's antagonism to the market is motivated not by moral or economic objections but by aesthetic criteria. (I discuss this in What Social Animals Owe to Each Other and here.) By that I mean they simply find market relations...