The Lighthouse®
President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan has many economists excited for a return of old-school Keynesian splurging. “Fiscal policy is back,” Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz cheered. “That will create more demand and that should give people more confidence to invest.” But economic growth comes down, not to demand, but to supply. And the Biden plan would stifle the innovation that drives it.
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By John Tierney (City Journal)
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul,” Nelson Mandela famously said, “than the way in which it treats its children.” By that standard, our society now has the soul of an abusive parent. The pandemic has turned American adults, or at least the ones who make the rules, into selfish neurotics who have been punishing innocent children for over a year—and they still can’t restrain themselves.
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By Art Carden (American Institute for Economic Research)
How often have you heard or read someone use a sports analogy to describe commercial society? Games are great fun, but they have winners and losers in ways exchanges don’t. Exchange is not, as any decent economist can tell you, a zero-sum proposition. Quite the opposite. In an exchange, you improve your position by helping other people improve theirs, and not to your disadvantage. Despite its progressive (read: ignorant) critics, commerce is indeed the greatest positive-sum ‘game’ ever invented.
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By K. Lloyd Billingsley (Washington Examiner)
“Biden-Harris Administration Announces Initial Actions to Address the Gun Violence Public Health Epidemic,” declared a recent White House—“fact sheet”? But hardly a fact was to be found in this latest assault on the Second Amendment. Just a lot of unsubstantiated bilge, including about “ghost guns.” And what, exactly, is so wrong about guns the government can’t trace? To see what can happen to a populace stripped of its traceable guns, read Stephen P. Halbrook’s Gun Control in the Third Reich.
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By Richard K. Vedder (Forbes)
When the Obama administration declared war on for-profit education, new rules disadvantaging the sector were implemented and even accreditation became more difficult. Many large schools went bankrupt or converted to not-for-profit status to reduce the regulatory attacks. But now there are signs that for-profit higher education is growing again, even flourishing. But college is also about things other than getting a job. Can these institutions deliver them?
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Volume 23, Issue 15: April 29, 2021
By Alexander William Salter (The Wall Street Journal)
President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan has many economists excited for a return of old-school Keynesian splurging. “Fiscal policy is back,” Nobel laureate Joe Stiglitz cheered. “That will create more demand and that should give people more confidence to invest.” But economic growth comes down, not to demand, but to supply. And the Biden plan would stifle the innovation that drives it.
READ MORE »
By John Tierney (City Journal)
“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul,” Nelson Mandela famously said, “than the way in which it treats its children.” By that standard, our society now has the soul of an abusive parent. The pandemic has turned American adults, or at least the ones who make the rules, into selfish neurotics who have been punishing innocent children for over a year—and they still can’t restrain themselves.
READ MORE »
By Art Carden (American Institute for Economic Research)
How often have you heard or read someone use a sports analogy to describe commercial society? Games are great fun, but they have winners and losers in ways exchanges don’t. Exchange is not, as any decent economist can tell you, a zero-sum proposition. Quite the opposite. In an exchange, you improve your position by helping other people improve theirs, and not to your disadvantage. Despite its progressive (read: ignorant) critics, commerce is indeed the greatest positive-sum ‘game’ ever invented.
READ MORE »
Future
Economic Peril or Prosperity?
Economic Peril or Prosperity?
Edited by Robert M. Whaples, Christopher J. Coyne, Michael C. Munger
By K. Lloyd Billingsley (Washington Examiner)
“Biden-Harris Administration Announces Initial Actions to Address the Gun Violence Public Health Epidemic,” declared a recent White House—“fact sheet”? But hardly a fact was to be found in this latest assault on the Second Amendment. Just a lot of unsubstantiated bilge, including about “ghost guns.” And what, exactly, is so wrong about guns the government can’t trace? To see what can happen to a populace stripped of its traceable guns, read Stephen P. Halbrook’s Gun Control in the Third Reich.
READ MORE »
By Richard K. Vedder (Forbes)
When the Obama administration declared war on for-profit education, new rules disadvantaging the sector were implemented and even accreditation became more difficult. Many large schools went bankrupt or converted to not-for-profit status to reduce the regulatory attacks. But now there are signs that for-profit higher education is growing again, even flourishing. But college is also about things other than getting a job. Can these institutions deliver them?
READ MORE »
The Beacon: New Blog Posts
- President Biden’s Climate Pledge: Aspirations Versus Policies, by Randall G. Holcombe
- Peru—Between a Rock and a Hard Place, by Alvaro Vargas Llosa
- Chauvin Outcome Is the Exception, Not the Rule, by Abigail R. Hall Blanco
Catalyst: New Articles
- Can Solar Energy Actually Compete in a Free Market?
- 7 Examples of Corrupt Congressional 2020 Earmarks, by Brad Polumbo
- Could Skyscrapers Made of Wood Rise in U.S. Cities?, by Scott Beyer
- How Stalin Canceled ‘Hamlet’ in the Soviet Union, by Jon Miltimore
