RealClearMarkets Articles
More Tax Revenue Is a Certain Path to Soaring National Debt
Central planning is bad, which means government spending is bad. Contra the most prominent number in economics (GDP), government spending is by its very name an economic wrecking ball.
These truths rate repeated mention, particularly given the rising tendency of natural government skeptics to cheer more tax collections for the U.S. Treasury. In a recent piece published at the libertarian Cato Institute, its excellent immigration specialist David Bier wrote what’s true about the highly positive economic impact of foreign workers, but puzzlingly added that immigrants are additive when it...
The AI Boom Is Tailor-Made for the Texas Economy
Recent multi-billion-dollar infrastructure investments like Meta’s plan for another gigawatt AI data center in El Paso, Texas, signal that the Lone Star State plans to defend its 20th-century dominance of the energy industry and convert it into the 21st-century nexus of tech and computing.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. In fact, using its massive size and geography to position itself at the intersection of revolutionary tech seems to be as Texan as beanless chili. Before the world associated it with cattle drives or Permian crude, Texas sat at...
Make Drug Prices Great Again Without Price Controls
Approximately 3.2 million Americans suffering from cancer, heart disease, and other serious or life-threatening diseases benefit from home infusion therapy. As the name suggests, home infusion therapy allows these patients to receive intravenous treatments at home instead of at a hospital. This improves the patient’s quality of life—as well as their health—by reducing their risk of contracting infections from spending too much time in hospitals. Infusion therapy is also more cost effective than hospital-administered treatments, and can be as much as 12 to 24...
The Cost of Inaction On Crypto Market Structure
America stands at a crypto crossroads. We can lead the next era of financial innovation, expanding opportunity for hardworking Americans to grow their savings and investments and strengthen U.S. economic leadership. Or we can fumble this opportunity, allowing regulatory uncertainty and disagreement on a small fraction of crypto market structure legislation to push innovation abroad.
As a former member of Congress, I understand that legislating is difficult, especially when tackling complex issues like establishing a market framework for digital assets. But deciding to do...
Contemplating the Difficult Labor-Market Conditions for U.S.-Born Men
Recently, two perspectives on merit-based hirings were presented. Lydia Polgreen deplored the increasing attacks on the employment of Indian professionals who gained admissions to the U.S. on H1-B visas. Colin Wright claimed that U.S. firms have dramatically reduced the share of hires going to white men.
While Polgreen infers that H1-B holders are merit-based hires, this may not be the case. Though a modest share of hires does go to extremely skilled workers, many go to those who substitute for comparably-skilled U.S.-born workers. The New York...
Calls to Weaken the Dollar Are the Stuff of Economic Ignorance
Calls to weaken the U.S. dollar have resurfaced in policy debates, framed to boost exports and reduce the so-called “trade deficit.” President Trump was reported as saying in a recent Wall Street Journal article that a cheaper dollar would restore American competitiveness abroad. The logic may sound intuitive to some, but it is economically flawed and historically dangerous.
As I have argued previously, the U.S. trade deficit is not an isolated failure. It is the accounting counterpart of a capital surplus. When the United States imports more than it exports, foreign...
Truth Is the Best Weapon In the War on Woke Insanity
Now that Epiphany has begun and Christmas is over, perhaps it’s time to stop being so excessively nice to “groups” that do the most damage to an orderly and civilized world. The greater good requires us to hurt some feelings. Remember in Star Trek when the Klingons attacked the USS Enterprise and Captain Kirk raised a force field so enemy weapons couldn’t penetrate the ship? That is precisely what the clever jackals on the Left have done to public discourse.
A generation ago, importing 100,000 Somalis into Minneapolis would have been rejected...
Orlando and Disney World Are Where Economic Myths Go To Die
In an ideal world, every credentialed economist would spend a day, week or semester in Orlando as a way of facing up to the myriad fallacies that stalk their profession. What gives Orlando life is reality about how economies work, and it runs counter to what economists teach.
Think the popular notion about the role of small business in the economy. Though not economists themselves (and that’s decidedly not a critique), Harriet Torry and Justin Lahart write at the Wall Street Journal that “Small businesses – those with up to 500 workers – employ nearly half the U.S....
Economists Whiffed Tariffs Precisely Because They Whiffed Inflation
They’re both wrong. Who is? Trump supporters who’ve long defended mindless tariffs, along with economists wisely against mindless tariffs, but who now claim they didn’t really mean what they said about President Trump’s tariffs at the time.
Take a recent letter-to-the-editor at the Wall Street Journal by economists Scott Burns and Caleb Fuller, professors respectively at Southeastern Louisiana University and Grove City College. Among other things, they write that “Higher import costs give consumers less bang for their buck.” Yes, very true.
It...
The NFL Draft Was a Lifeline for Tom Brady That Cam Rising Doesn't Need
“Definitely wasn’t interested in going to insurance or anything like that.” That’s how former University of Texas and University of Utah quarterback Cam Rising explained his decision to get into football coaching.
Though formerly a Rose Bowl quarterback, a top Heisman candidate, and an NFL prospect, a variety of injuries, including an insurmountable one to his throwing hand, ultimately ended Rising’s football playing days in 2024. But he’s still in the game.
Contrast this with Tom Brady. As is well known, Brady was drafted in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL...
A Worthy Trump New Year's Resolution: Ditch Biden's Antitrust Agenda
Signs of the persistence of the Biden antitrust agenda heading into the Trump White House were evident early in the new administration.
Trump’s antitrust agents started the year with a statement that they would continue to oversee mergers using the 2023 Merger Guidelines. These Biden Era rules muddied the clarity of earlier guidelines followed by both Democratic and Republican Administrations. The Biden-era Merger Guidelines reduced predictability. Market shares would not be determinative. A menu of suspicious acts was announced, which could stop mergers even if the market...
Jason Furman Continues To Show Us How Economies Do Not Grow
As has been said here before, the most important line in Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson has rarely, if ever, been referenced. Hazlitt wrote, “What is harmful or disastrous for an individual must be equally harmful or disastrous to the collection of individuals that make up a nation.” It deserves more attention.
Think a recent piece by Harvard economist Jason Furman at the New York Times. Opining about the Trump economy, Furman wrote that “One well-measured component of economic growth is consumer spending, which represents more than two-thirds of the...
Please Mitt Romney, Do Not Pay More In Taxes
“And on the tax front, it’s time for rich people like me to pay more.” As some may know, but exponentially fewer than he surely hoped, that's what 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote recently in the New York Times.
Romney seemingly missed that “Rich Republican apostasy on taxes” is nothing new. Paraphrasing Romney being criticized by Barack Obama, “the 1980s called and they want their cheap political stunts back.”
Unfortunately, Republicans and conservatives are slower than Romney in picking up on just how desperately yesterday...
Why Direct-to-Consumer Drug Sales Are the Future
Medicine is expensive and only seems to get more so every year. But this doesn’t have to be inevitable. The reason patients pay so much is an insurance industry that no longer functions like insurance. Instead of handling catastrophic and unexpected problems, health insurance is the go-to solution for routine healthcare, including predictable pharmaceutical needs. This has disconnected patients from the prices of their medicines and allowed Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs) to profit from drug discounts intended for patients. The result has been higher drug prices as cheaper...
Shareholders Deserve the Truth About the Aim of Expenditures
If corporate leaders dress up ideological expenditures as profitable investments, without vetting them against projected cash flows and opportunity costs, they are not merely misallocating capital but misleading stakeholders and courting legal liability.
The fundamental obligation of a corporate fiduciary is unambiguous: to make business decisions on a fully informed basis in order to maximize shareholder value. While this duty has long been the bedrock of corporate governance, the rapid expansion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing—growing to more than $16...
A Thank You Letter to RFK Jr. For His Unexpected Impact on Me
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.Secretary of Health and Human ServicesU.S. Department of Health and Human Services200 Independence Avenue, SWWashington, DC 20201
Dear Mr. Kennedy:
I’d like to thank you for something you did for me. It’s something you once said that has stuck with me and has risen to a new personal epiphany based on recent events. But before I explain what you said and what followed, some background.
We likely come from two different political worlds. I’m not Irish, nor Catholic. I am the opposite of a big-government liberal. The best government is the government that...
Through Cato's Rigidity, We See Longstanding Drift at Heritage
It was 1994, and the Republicans had just taken control of the House of Representatives. After the change Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane received a call from Fannie Mae, one in which he was told of a pending donation from the public/private mortgage giant.
Crane knew the why behind the contribution: it reflected Fannie Mae’s desire to play to the other side in the new Washington. He refused the donation. Cato didn't nor does it take contributions from governmental entities.
It's useful to bring up what Crane did as a way of perhaps understanding the troubles the...
The Rich Are Crucial Venture Buyers, Keep Drug Prices High for Them
“We are all faced with a series of great opportunities—brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.” - John W. Gardner
Rich people are the most important buyers in the world. That’s why it’s unfortunate that President Trump is actively leaning on U.S. pharmaceutical corporations to lower drug prices. What a shame, most of all for the poorest Americans.
The clue for why can be found in this opinion piece’s opening sentence. It’s all about the rich. As the rare buyers for whom price is an afterthought, they take the risks with obscure and...
A Tragedy In Bangladesh Is a Reminder of Our Good Fortune
Working recently in a manufacturing facility outside of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, Chandra Das entered a debate at the factory’s inspection table. Das, a Hindu, apparently made a negative comment with religious overtones. They were seemingly his last words.
As New York Times reporters Saif Hasnat and Mujib Mashal described it, Das’s co-workers “accused him of blasphemy and dragged him out into the street. As rumors spread that Mr. Das had said something disparaging of Islam’s prophet Mohammed, an angry mob grew. They lynched him, tied his body to a tree and set...
Soaring GDP Is More Evidence of What a Fraudulent Number It Is
The fraudulent number that is Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a substantially shrunken number relative to the true size of the U.S. economy. See the “surge” in GDP reported yesterday for evidence.
The U.S. economy is always growing precisely due to the people in the United States, and their prosperity is most certainly much greater than what GDP indicates. To see why, just contemplate what factored large in the 4.3% increase.
Exports rose 8.8% while imports of goods fell at a 4.7% rate. While an economy as thoroughly dynamic as the U.S.’s shouldn’t be measured in the...
