Big-box stores have long been an integral part of U.S. suburban life, offering better deals and selection. But they’re less common in cities. There is still no Walmart in New York, Boston, Detroit, San Francisco or Seattle. In the 2010s, Walmart experimented with a smaller-scale model targeted at urban neighborhoods, but the results have been...
There’s strong and growing evidence that the “next” US recession has begun — or will begin soon. Of course, many economists will remain unsure about it, having not forecasted it, or because they refuse to forecast, or because they don’t believe something’s real until it passes them by (perhaps not even then). Similarly tardy will...
Perhaps the most amazing fact in all of economic history is the unprecedented rise in wealth per person that has taken place in the last two centuries, following the Industrial Revolution. But it remains a widespread belief that these fruits of capitalism have only benefited the rich at the expense of the poor. This perspective...
Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance has been widely criticized for his gratuitous advice to American women on childbirth. The criticism can be extended to the broader goal of Vance and other isolationists, which is to defend American culture from past and future foreign influences. Their intent to purify culture from things foreign demonstrates extreme ignorance of...
Considering that it is an election year, it is perhaps unsurprising that there are two competing narratives on the current state of real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) wages. Democrats point out that, even after adjusting for inflation, wages are now higher than they were prior to the pandemic. Republicans, in contrast, note that real wages have declined...
The principle of free exchange—also known as the trader principle—is one of the most important aspects of a market economy, and perhaps no brand exemplifies it better than the Klondike Bar. For over a century, a chocolate covered block of ice cream has been delighting customers and, since the 1980s, the brand has been asking:...
I recently drove to the local KFC and ordered a 12-piece meal to go. The price was just under $50 (tax included). Fortunately, I had a coupon that saved me some money, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel some sticker shock. Inflation has of course been a major issue in recent...
Housing construction in America often occurs in subdivisions. Whether located in urban infill contexts or suburban greenfields (more often the case), these are standalone private developments with their own internal infrastructure. Seldom do they have real autonomy, though. They’re still subject to single-family zoning and other land-use regulations, which make many such communities exclusive. And...
Barely halfway through 2024, the rapidly rising tower of US public debt has reached yet another milestone. Two hundred and six days after reaching $34 trillion, America’s debt pile has reached $35 trillion. To put this in perspective, the debt at the end of World War II was about $259 billion, making the current debt...
On July 19th, something peculiar struck workers and consumers around the world. A global computer outage brought many industries to a sudden halt. Employees at airports, financial institutions, and other businesses showed up to work only to find that they had no access to company systems. The fallout of the outage was huge. Experts estimate...
Humans, it seems, are always on the verge of obsolescence. There is no innovation without opposition from two groups: people who lose their jobs and people who think about mass unemployment and ask, “Where will the new jobs come from?” The devil is in the details, but at least in principle, redistribution should be able...
In February, a stream of tractors driven by Italian farmers arrived at the outskirts of Rome, horns blaring. The scene, which was captured by the Agence France-Presse, was just one of dozens of protests across Europe against EU regulations that farmers said threatened to put them out of work. “They’re drowning us with all these...
The latest employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for June 2024 offers a compelling snapshot of the divergent economic fortunes of red and blue states. The national unemployment rate remained steady at 4.1 percent, a modest increase of 0.5 percentage points from June 2023. Yet, beneath these headline figures lie significant contrasts between...
The ancient Roman orator and statesman Cicero labeled him “the foremost man of Greece.” Cornelius Nepos, a biographer and contemporary of Cicero’s, regarded him as “incorruptible.” The 16th-century French Renaissance philosopher Michel de Montaigne judged him “one of the three worthiest and most excellent men” in all of history. This man was a warrior-philosopher, a...