The famous line "We have met the enemy and he is us" is from Walt Kelly's comic strip, Pogo. Kelly adapted the line from a U.S. naval commandant who, during the War of 1812 against Great Britain, reported to his superior, “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”...
Economics
On Wealth Inequality, the Left Has a Point
by Thomas Eddlem | Jun 12, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles
The federal government has been waging a war against the middle class and working poor since at least 1970. Wealth inequality has steadily increased since the early 1970s, and it’s not a coincidence. It’s a result of a series of policies. The government wants the...
DOJ, Lay Off Live Nation!
by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Jun 11, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles
Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) finally came out with their long anticipated antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation Entertainment. Alleging anti-competitive practices which “suffocates its competition,” everyone’s least favorite Attorney General (since...
Why Libertarians Loathe Tariffs
by Laurence Vance | Jun 11, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles
Former president and current Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump loves tariffs. In his 2011 book Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again, Trump included as part of his five-part tax policy “a 20 percent tax for importing goods.” During his first campaign...
TGIF: Freedom or Power
by Sheldon Richman | Jun 7, 2024 | Economics, Featured Articles, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, the Austrian-school economist who learned from Carl Menger and taught Ludwig von Mises, speaks to the ages. We ignore his lessons to our peril. One hundred ten years ago, in a journal article titled "Control or Economic Law," he wrote: [J]ust as...
What Inequality?
by Sheldon Richman | Jun 6, 2024 | Blog, Economics, Politics
According to research conducted by Phil Gramm, the late Robert Ekelund, and John Early, documented in The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate and summarized in this video: The bottom 20 percent of households have an average annual income...
Immigration Talk
by Sheldon Richman | Jun 6, 2024 | Blog, Economics, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics
I talk about immigration with Michael Liebowitz on The Rational Egoist.
Democracy and Free Stuff
by Sheldon Richman | Jun 4, 2024 | Blog, Economics, Justice, Politics
Democracy: the matching up of people who want free stuff with politicians who promise free stuff. Problem: free stuff as they all imagine it does not exist. However, it does exist in the market, as explained by Frédéric Bastiat in Economic Harmonies, chapter 8,...