Among the hotly contested list of Joe Biden’s promises is an increase of the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. There are plenty of sound reasons to oppose government minimum wage laws, but there is one objection making the rounds that is based on bad economics and...
Economics
How Small States Enable Wealth: A Historical Analysis
by Jeffrey Herbener | Jan 25, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism
Deepak Lal, a prominent, pro-market, development economist wrote the following words in his 2004 book, In Praise of Empires: Empires have been natural throughout human history. Most people have lived in empires. Empires and the process of globalization associated with...
A Bigger Military Doesn’t Mean a Stronger Military
by Ryan McMaken | Jan 19, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles, Foreign Policy
In the debate over whether or not China will soon rise to challenge the United States as the world’s hegemon, it is often assumed that states with large aggregate economies are necessarily more militarily powerful ones. This stems from decades-old methods that remain...
Silver Lining to the Lockdowns?
by Doug French | Jan 16, 2021 | Economics, Featured Articles
Something good is coming out of the covid lockdowns. Economist David Rosenberg released a special report via the eponymous Rosenberg Research, concluding “the pre-COVID-19 ‘norm’ of a 7% personal savings rate will morph into a post-COVID-19 norm of 10%.” Rosenberg...
A Defense of the Peaceful Transfer of War-Making Power
by Sheldon Richman | Jan 13, 2021 | Blog, Economics, Justice, Libertarianism
Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausevitz famously said that "war is a continuation of politics by other means." I think we can reverse this: politics is war by other means. The ultimate aim of politics (in the narrow sense of the word; there's a more...
Bitcoin vs. Wall Street
by Tom Luongo | Dec 14, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles
The big worry among the bitcoin perma-bears is the threat of government ‘making it illegal.’ The latest bogeyman on this front is none other than U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. Rumors float that he’s considering outlawing ‘self-custody wallets,’ in effect...
Libertarian Messaging For 2021: Part 1
by Peter R. Quiñones | Dec 4, 2020 | Economics, Foreign Policy, Libertarianism, Peter Quinones
This is a continuation of my pieces on the LP and what it would take for me to support them. The great Dave Smith made a Tweet yesterday in which he laid out what the libertarian message should be for 2021. Since he is confined to 280 characters by Twitter I thought...
Suffocating Dissent Ep. 137
by Patrick Macfarlane | Nov 14, 2020 | Economics, Libertarianism, Politics, Vital Dissent
https://youtu.be/fb9hc79vjg4 The Great Keith Knight joins me once again as I share how I recently made a scene at Papa Johns. We demolish the theory that masks are effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19, and use economic parallels to illustrate how COVID-19...