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Mar 17, 2025
Production is money. Nothing else. These things can't be planned.
-
Mar 15, 2025
When asked if he attended his Lincoln High School (Brooklyn) reunions, the recently passed New York City real estate mogul and civic leader Marshall Rose said he did not, that he...
-
Mar 14, 2025
Businesses fight consumers every day for access to precious capital. Yes, you read that right. The businesses economists tell us are reliant on consumption are in a battle for...
-
Mar 13, 2025
“Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to see anybody.” Those were the words of polymath thinker, actor, entertainer and director Mike Nichols (1931-2014) at...
-
Mar 12, 2025
A gold standard would do wonders for economic growth, but would almost certainly not limit the growth of our federal government. The view that it would insults markets at least three...
-
Mar 11, 2025
Milton Friedman was incorrect. About the negative income tax, specifically. The great Nobel Laureate (1912-2006) viewed a negative income tax as something that would encourage...
-
Mar 10, 2025
How can these private monies replace the dollar when their value is measured in dollars?
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Mar 8, 2025
When we look back on 2025 in 2030, rest assured that we’ll have forgotten or moved beyond what had us so scared in 2025. While what will happen next week is nearly impossible...
-
Mar 7, 2025
In the seriously great news department, pancreatic cancer is expected to pass colorectal cancer as the second biggest cause of cancer-related death by 2030. Yes, it’s great...
-
Mar 6, 2025
Panicky politicians caused the coronavirus crack-up, period. If not for their tragic inability to keep their cool, the coronavirus scare would have been anything but. To ignore the...
-
Mar 5, 2025
Apple should be free to hire whomever it wants, and without regard to what its critics think. The previous assertion is about private property and freedom, but it’s worth...
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Mar 4, 2025
A federal tax levied on a New York City resident is a tax on a Floridian. The previous truth is rarely discussed by economists and pundits focused on Floridians who’ve escaped...
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Mar 4, 2025
Importing Silicon Valley skills in addition to its products.
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Mar 3, 2025
Prices are how a market economy organizes itself, and as such are not meant to be tamed by government.
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Mar 1, 2025
“He was just the waiter.” That’s what one of the owners of legendary New York steakhouse Peter Luger said about Wolfgang Zwiener. “All” he’d done...
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Feb 28, 2025
Whatever worries you about what’s going on in the world, stop. The advice is wise not because your fears aren’t potentially valid, but precisely because they’re...
-
Feb 27, 2025
It always interested Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane that while left-handed writers represent roughly 11 percent of the population, something like 40 percent of Cato’s staff...
-
Feb 26, 2025
“Carried interest” is extraordinarily misleading. It implies a fixed and very certain income stream in the way that interest bearing accounts at banks do. Which is the...
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Feb 25, 2025
100% percent of any Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) savings should be returned to taxpayers. This shouldn’t even be a debate, but sadly it will be since neither side...
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Feb 24, 2025
To suggest that higher interest rates would strengthen the dollar is like saying a facelift will fix a broken leg
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Feb 22, 2025
“I keep a button on my desk that says ‘Life?’ Of course I have a life. It’s a life filled with books.” Those are the words of Michael Dirda, Pulitzer...
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Feb 21, 2025
Roughly a fifth of Apple’s iPhones are sold in China. Repeat the previous anecdote over and over again, and ideally convey it to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Matt Pottinger,...
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Feb 20, 2025
Laments about the state of education are arguably as old as education is, or close to it. And they’ve always been a waste of time.
That’s because knowledge isn’t...
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Feb 19, 2025
When Donald Keough took over as President and COO of Coca-Cola in 1981, one of the first things he did was walk the halls of the company’s headquarters to get to know the...
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Feb 18, 2025
The U.S. has a massive budget and eye-popping debt precisely because Congress annually fleeces the rich. To believe otherwise is to believe in Santa Claus, ferociously dumb markets,...
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Feb 17, 2025
Objective measures of the dollar's value remind us that the higher prices of 2021-22 had nothing to do with inflation.
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Feb 15, 2025
“He’s not going to play Division I football.” That’s what a Division I coach told Chris Cox, the defensive coordinator at Chris Jones’s high school...
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Feb 14, 2025
If leaders of other countries ever really want to weaken the United States, they should embrace collectivism. It's that simple.
Which is but a small reminder that imports never hurt...
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Feb 13, 2025
"They have treated us very unfairly on trade." That's one of President Trump's most frequent economic themes, and he has a point. So do "they."
To see why, it's easy to forget that...
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Feb 12, 2025
Price controls will suffocate a much more robust housing recovery in the Los Angeles area. What’s sad is that it was all so unnecessary.
As the Wall Street Journal’s Greg...
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Feb 11, 2025
Amazon and Google are fighting gallantly to remain relevant. Whether or not they will remain relevant is a question that hundreds of billions worth of investment will answer.
To...
-
Feb 10, 2025
With or without a Fed acting as a full employment act for economists, economic growth and money will take care of themselves simply because they're one and the same.
-
Feb 8, 2025
“How much do their leaders believe in communism?” That was the first question Ronald Reagan asked Suzanne Massie, the recently passed Soviet and Russia expert, during...
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Feb 7, 2025
Despite what Fed officials, economists, and their media enablers tell you, there’s no such thing as costless credit. This is important simply because economists and pundits who...
-
Feb 6, 2025
Ten days ago the shares of Nvidia corrected 17 percent. How could this have happened to such an “owned” and analyzed company? The answer, at least as of now, is that...
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Feb 5, 2025
“Please take into consideration when you want to come after us down the road for something that Bear Stearns did, that J.P. Morgan was asked to do this by the federal...
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Feb 4, 2025
Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane has always said that freedom is the answer to any question about economic growth. If people are free they’ll have all the prosperity they...
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Feb 3, 2025
If the Fed could prop up stocks, stocks wouldn't be worth buying.
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Feb 1, 2025
“Since he was a kid, Randy Miod wanted to be at the beach. Once he got there, he never left.” That’s what the Wall Street Journal’s Chris Kornelis wrote about...
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Jan 31, 2025
Compensation in the United States is very good. How you know this without knowing it is that most of the best, most valuable businesses in the world are American.
It brings to mind...
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Jan 30, 2025
Highly emotional members of the left have been known to bemoan immense wealth. Possessing a fixed pie, zero sum view of the world, they imagine that wealth is taken as opposed to...
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Jan 29, 2025
“We have access to information that you don’t have.” That’s one way Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916-2009) explained a Vietnam War that not everyone...
-
Jan 28, 2025
Oil is the most important commodity in the world when it comes to human flourishing, and nothing else comes close. Stop and think about how intensely inconvenient and impoverished...
-
Jan 27, 2025
Higher prices aren't necessarily inflation. We have higher prices since the coronavirus not because of monetary error, but due to tragic lockdowns.
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Jan 25, 2025
In his 2023 book The Art Thief, author Michael Finkel crucially observed (my book review here) that “art is the result of facing almost no survival pressure of all.” So...
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Jan 24, 2025
“The world is being swamped with Chinese goods, and the United States, Europe and Japan are right to worry about it.” Those are the opening words of a recent Washington...
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Jan 23, 2025
North Carolina’s legislature recently passed a Congressional Term Limits resolution in bipartisan fashion. The Tar Heel state is the third one in 2024 (joining Louisiana and Tenness
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Jan 22, 2025
Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell writes that Scott Bessent “is using all the budget high jinks at his disposal to produce a pseudoscientific plan that’s...
-
Jan 21, 2025
Jack Kemp (1935-2009) always felt Republicans should do well with minorities and immigrants. He saw the Republicans as the party of opportunity, and felt his message of growth should...
-
Jan 20, 2025
Production is a tautological signal of money in circulation, not the existence of central banks, mints, Treasuries or monetary authorities more broadly.
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Jan 18, 2025
I was first introduced to David Lodge’s endlessly great novels when a college girlfriend gave me her copy of Nice Work. The book was assigned to her in a senior-year English...
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Jan 18, 2025
Writing about antitrust law recently, the excellent Holman Jenkins observed that “At best it’s a criminal waste of talent. At worst, it’s deeply worrisome that any...
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Jan 17, 2025
Government spending never enhances economic growth precisely because governments only have money to spend insofar as they have taxable access to private economic activity. In other...
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Jan 16, 2025
It turns out back-scratching is a profession. And a well-paid one at that. So is sleeping, videogame playing, and college sorority consulting. As automation and globalization...
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Jan 15, 2025
Central banks don’t “supply” dollars to cities, states and nations, rather dollars are an automatic effect of production in cities, states and nations. Contrary to...
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Jan 14, 2025
“Congress Didn’t Ban TikTok.” That’s the title of Mike Gallagher’s latest column in the Wall Street Journal. The former congressman from Wisconsin is...
-
Jan 13, 2025
Monetarism and neo-Austrian thought aren’t rejections of Keynesianism, rather they’re variants of it.
-
Jan 11, 2025
Adam Smith’s observation that “the sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods” cannot be repeated enough. It explains so much, and in particular it explains...
-
Jan 10, 2025
They’re libertarians and they don’t know it. That’s long been the view of Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane. It’s what he expressed decades ago to recently...
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Jan 9, 2025
To this day it’s said that mark-to-market (MTM) accounting rules are what caused existential troubles for banks and investment banks back in 2008. It sounds so compelling at...
-
Jan 8, 2025
It’s been said before by many inside and outside of science that so-called “global warming" is a good thing. Usually it’s pointed out that warming associates with...
-
Jan 7, 2025
Economist Gordon Tullock (1922-2014) once quipped that there was an easy way to create safer conditions on American roads: rather than install seatbelts and air bags, attach a rather...
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Jan 6, 2025
Rules or no rules, what the Fed does really doesn’t matter.
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Jan 4, 2025
The view here is that mass deportation of Mexicans from the United States will ultimately result in quite a few more Mexicans searching for a way to get to the United States than...
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Jan 3, 2025
“The federal government owns a little more than one-fourth of the total land area of the United States. The time is long overdue to consider whether that is the best economic...
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Jan 2, 2025
If you ever want to learn economics, just purchase books about entertainment and sports. It’s that simple. Considering antitrust alone, the whole profession could be put out of...
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Jan 1, 2025
“The greatest fever of all was aspiration, a belief in the sheer possibility to remake a life.” That’s what Evan Osnos wrote in Age of Ambition, his remarkable 2014...
Mar 17, 2025Production is money. Nothing else. These things can't be planned.
Mar 15, 2025When asked if he attended his Lincoln High School (Brooklyn) reunions, the recently passed New York City real estate mogul and civic leader Marshall Rose said he did not, that he...
Mar 14, 2025Businesses fight consumers every day for access to precious capital. Yes, you read that right. The businesses economists tell us are reliant on consumption are in a battle for...
Mar 13, 2025“Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to see anybody.” Those were the words of polymath thinker, actor, entertainer and director Mike Nichols (1931-2014) at...
Mar 12, 2025A gold standard would do wonders for economic growth, but would almost certainly not limit the growth of our federal government. The view that it would insults markets at least three...
Mar 11, 2025Milton Friedman was incorrect. About the negative income tax, specifically. The great Nobel Laureate (1912-2006) viewed a negative income tax as something that would encourage...
Mar 10, 2025How can these private monies replace the dollar when their value is measured in dollars?
Mar 8, 2025When we look back on 2025 in 2030, rest assured that we’ll have forgotten or moved beyond what had us so scared in 2025. While what will happen next week is nearly impossible...
Mar 7, 2025In the seriously great news department, pancreatic cancer is expected to pass colorectal cancer as the second biggest cause of cancer-related death by 2030. Yes, it’s great...
Mar 6, 2025Panicky politicians caused the coronavirus crack-up, period. If not for their tragic inability to keep their cool, the coronavirus scare would have been anything but. To ignore the...
Mar 5, 2025Apple should be free to hire whomever it wants, and without regard to what its critics think. The previous assertion is about private property and freedom, but it’s worth...
Mar 4, 2025A federal tax levied on a New York City resident is a tax on a Floridian. The previous truth is rarely discussed by economists and pundits focused on Floridians who’ve escaped...
Mar 4, 2025Importing Silicon Valley skills in addition to its products. 
Mar 3, 2025Prices are how a market economy organizes itself, and as such are not meant to be tamed by government.
Mar 1, 2025“He was just the waiter.” That’s what one of the owners of legendary New York steakhouse Peter Luger said about Wolfgang Zwiener. “All” he’d done...
Feb 28, 2025Whatever worries you about what’s going on in the world, stop. The advice is wise not because your fears aren’t potentially valid, but precisely because they’re...
Feb 27, 2025It always interested Cato Institute co-founder Ed Crane that while left-handed writers represent roughly 11 percent of the population, something like 40 percent of Cato’s staff...
Feb 26, 2025“Carried interest” is extraordinarily misleading. It implies a fixed and very certain income stream in the way that interest bearing accounts at banks do. Which is the...
Feb 25, 2025100% percent of any Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) savings should be returned to taxpayers. This shouldn’t even be a debate, but sadly it will be since neither side...
Feb 24, 2025To suggest that higher interest rates would strengthen the dollar is like saying a facelift will fix a broken leg
Feb 22, 2025“I keep a button on my desk that says ‘Life?’ Of course I have a life. It’s a life filled with books.” Those are the words of Michael Dirda, Pulitzer...
Feb 21, 2025Roughly a fifth of Apple’s iPhones are sold in China. Repeat the previous anecdote over and over again, and ideally convey it to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Matt Pottinger,...
Feb 19, 2025When Donald Keough took over as President and COO of Coca-Cola in 1981, one of the first things he did was walk the halls of the company’s headquarters to get to know the...
Feb 18, 2025The U.S. has a massive budget and eye-popping debt precisely because Congress annually fleeces the rich. To believe otherwise is to believe in Santa Claus, ferociously dumb markets,...
Feb 15, 2025“He’s not going to play Division I football.” That’s what a Division I coach told Chris Cox, the defensive coordinator at Chris Jones’s high school...
Feb 14, 2025If leaders of other countries ever really want to weaken the United States, they should embrace collectivism. It's that simple. Which is but a small reminder that imports never hurt...
Feb 13, 2025"They have treated us very unfairly on trade." That's one of President Trump's most frequent economic themes, and he has a point. So do "they." To see why, it's easy to forget that...
Feb 12, 2025Price controls will suffocate a much more robust housing recovery in the Los Angeles area. What’s sad is that it was all so unnecessary. As the Wall Street Journal’s Greg...
Feb 11, 2025Amazon and Google are fighting gallantly to remain relevant. Whether or not they will remain relevant is a question that hundreds of billions worth of investment will answer. To...
Feb 10, 2025With or without a Fed acting as a full employment act for economists, economic growth and money will take care of themselves simply because they're one and the same.
Feb 8, 2025“How much do their leaders believe in communism?” That was the first question Ronald Reagan asked Suzanne Massie, the recently passed Soviet and Russia expert, during...
Feb 7, 2025Despite what Fed officials, economists, and their media enablers tell you, there’s no such thing as costless credit. This is important simply because economists and pundits who...
Feb 6, 2025Ten days ago the shares of Nvidia corrected 17 percent. How could this have happened to such an “owned” and analyzed company? The answer, at least as of now, is that...
Feb 5, 2025“Please take into consideration when you want to come after us down the road for something that Bear Stearns did, that J.P. Morgan was asked to do this by the federal...
Feb 3, 2025If the Fed could prop up stocks, stocks wouldn't be worth buying.
Feb 1, 2025“Since he was a kid, Randy Miod wanted to be at the beach. Once he got there, he never left.” That’s what the Wall Street Journal’s Chris Kornelis wrote about...
Jan 31, 2025Compensation in the United States is very good. How you know this without knowing it is that most of the best, most valuable businesses in the world are American. It brings to mind...
Jan 30, 2025Highly emotional members of the left have been known to bemoan immense wealth. Possessing a fixed pie, zero sum view of the world, they imagine that wealth is taken as opposed to...
Jan 29, 2025“We have access to information that you don’t have.” That’s one way Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916-2009) explained a Vietnam War that not everyone...
Jan 28, 2025Oil is the most important commodity in the world when it comes to human flourishing, and nothing else comes close. Stop and think about how intensely inconvenient and impoverished...
Jan 27, 2025Higher prices aren't necessarily inflation. We have higher prices since the coronavirus not because of monetary error, but due to tragic lockdowns.
Jan 24, 2025“The world is being swamped with Chinese goods, and the United States, Europe and Japan are right to worry about it.” Those are the opening words of a recent Washington...
Jan 23, 2025North Carolina’s legislature recently passed a Congressional Term Limits resolution in bipartisan fashion. The Tar Heel state is the third one in 2024 (joining Louisiana and Tenness
Jan 22, 2025Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell writes that Scott Bessent “is using all the budget high jinks at his disposal to produce a pseudoscientific plan that’s...
Jan 21, 2025Jack Kemp (1935-2009) always felt Republicans should do well with minorities and immigrants. He saw the Republicans as the party of opportunity, and felt his message of growth should...
Jan 20, 2025Production is a tautological signal of money in circulation, not the existence of central banks, mints, Treasuries or monetary authorities more broadly.
Jan 18, 2025Writing about antitrust law recently, the excellent Holman Jenkins observed that “At best it’s a criminal waste of talent. At worst, it’s deeply worrisome that any...
Jan 17, 2025Government spending never enhances economic growth precisely because governments only have money to spend insofar as they have taxable access to private economic activity. In other...
Jan 16, 2025It turns out back-scratching is a profession. And a well-paid one at that. So is sleeping, videogame playing, and college sorority consulting. As automation and globalization...
Jan 14, 2025“Congress Didn’t Ban TikTok.” That’s the title of Mike Gallagher’s latest column in the Wall Street Journal. The former congressman from Wisconsin is...
Jan 13, 2025Monetarism and neo-Austrian thought aren’t rejections of Keynesianism, rather they’re variants of it.
Jan 11, 2025Adam Smith’s observation that “the sole use of money is to circulate consumable goods” cannot be repeated enough. It explains so much, and in particular it explains...
Jan 9, 2025To this day it’s said that mark-to-market (MTM) accounting rules are what caused existential troubles for banks and investment banks back in 2008. It sounds so compelling at...
Jan 8, 2025It’s been said before by many inside and outside of science that so-called “global warming" is a good thing. Usually it’s pointed out that warming associates with...
Jan 7, 2025Economist Gordon Tullock (1922-2014) once quipped that there was an easy way to create safer conditions on American roads: rather than install seatbelts and air bags, attach a rather...
Jan 4, 2025The view here is that mass deportation of Mexicans from the United States will ultimately result in quite a few more Mexicans searching for a way to get to the United States than...
Jan 3, 2025“The federal government owns a little more than one-fourth of the total land area of the United States. The time is long overdue to consider whether that is the best economic...