The classic tale of “the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer” never seems to get old. The newly released Takers Not Makers report from Oxfam fuels the idea that billionaire wealth is skyrocketing while the poor are getting poorer. They claim that poverty levels have barely changed since 1990, and that 60 percent...
By Dr. Timothy G. Nash, Jim Hop, Dr. Thomas Rastin, and Anthony Storer An objective and bipartisan review of key economic data is needed to understand the results of the fall 2024 U.S. presidential election. Below, we evaluate 13 key indicators impacting the U.S. economy and their role in the re-election of President Donald Trump....
The eyes of the world are focused on the White House where President Donald Trump’s return is a harbinger of very significant and consequential changes in America’s international trade policies. The President of the United States demanded major economic and political concessions from China, Mexico, Canada, and the European Union which, if not satisfied promptly,...
Last year, we celebrated 50 years of Friedrich Hayek’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. We also marked 80 years since the great Austrian economist published his global bestseller, The Road to Serfdom. The book came out during the rise of Clement Atlee in the United Kingdom and of Juan Peron in Argentina. Just as...
Amid the ongoing revival of trade protectionism on the political right, a number of commentators associated with the “National Conservative” movement have attempted to enlist the founding fathers to the cause of tariffs. According to this narrative, America’s founders — led by Alexander Hamilton — charted a political course of economic nationalism to escape a...
One of the themes that seems to be emerging in the first weeks of Donald Trump’s second term is geography, and specifically cartography. He has already renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, he has floated the idea of Canada becoming the 51st state, and he has also expressed interest in bringing Greenland...
My colleague, Maggie Anders, recently made an insightful post on X. As Trump begins to shutter government bureaus (or at least pieces of them), many are highlighting an obvious downside: government employees will lose jobs if you shut down government agencies. Some articles are calling it the biggest layoff in history, and saying it will...
When I served in Congress, I was regularly lectured about how the people needed big government to keep them safe and secure, whether it was through welfare and regulations to ensure their economic security, the Patriot Act to protect their personal security, or forever wars to protect global security. Of course, the government’s track record...
The first month of the Trump administration featured among other things a highly-publicized spectacle of Elon Musk and his DOGE team being unleashed on various parts of the federal bureaucracy and sparking sharp partisan exchanges, with Democrats raging about a “constitutional crisis” triggered by Trump crudely ignoring many of the finer legal points regarding appropriated...
The public is invited to experience the Free Market Road Show, a prestigious international lecture series that travels to the world’s largest cities. On April 14, it will bring global economic experts to Midland, Michigan, for a morning of engaging discussions on free-market principles and policy reforms at Northwood University. The Free Market Road Show,...
July 20, 1969, is a day no 13-year-old (at the time) boy in America can forget. The Eagle landed and there was one small step for man and one giant leap for mankind. America had won the race to put a man on the moon. The competition was between the American capitalists and the Soviet...
I was recently taken aback by a lengthy piece that I read (very oddly) in the Wall Street Journal. Jacob Berger is a professor of philosophy at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He authored an article in the WSJ on January 23 entitled “Why MAGA Folks Should Read Marx,” in which he wrote: [G]iven the...
Americans are praying for tens of thousands of families who lost relatives and homes in the devastating fires in Los Angeles. Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass face criticism for prioritizing the well-being of fish over people, for misguided environmentalist policies that effectively turned the local forests into a tinderbox, and for diverting state and local...
At first glance, what appears to be just another natural disaster, upon closer look, reveals a widespread state policy failure driven by a flat-earth theory of economic policy. In recent years, the state of California has waged a war against insurance companies. The California Department of Insurance (CDI) has closely regulated insurance premiums, requiring approval...