Protectionist fears have not stopped the United States from capitalizing on the gains of free trade. Trade as a share of GDP grew from 10.8 percent in 1970 to 27.4 percent in 2022: an increase of 16.6 percentage points in a span during which the US economy quadrupled in size in real terms. America’s value...
We’ve all found ourselves at least a few times in our lives listening to friends or relatives complain about voter apathy. If only voters properly researched policies and politicians, everything would be better, we hear. Unfortunately, the incentives just aren’t there. Anthony Downs called this phenomenon “rational ignorance,” and it is especially significant with government-related...
The scale of fraud against U.S. taxpayers during the coronavirus pandemic amounts to billions, possibly even trillions of dollars. Count the Internal Revenue Service among the government agencies that enabled the frauds that were perpetrated. The numbers aren’t small, as Reason’s J.D. Tucille reports: You can add the Internal Revenue Service to the ranks of...
As the housing affordability crisis drags on, politicians and pundits are increasingly blaming investors for the rise in prices and dearth of supply. This misdiagnosis, though, threatens to exacerbate the crisis while ignoring the root causes: federal mortgage subsidies, interest rate manipulation, central bank MBS purchases, rising construction costs, and local land-use restrictions. Home prices...
Must the environment suffer for the economy to grow? It may seem so in the short run. But contrary to the myth that “capitalism destroys the environment,” wealth creation improves both the environment and the economy through technological and scientific progress. The economist Simon Kuznets first drew an inverted U-shaped curve to describe the relationship...
In a thought-provoking article, my colleague Patrick Carroll offered his insights into the challenges of developing a coherent libertarian foreign policy. His emphasis on the immorality of forcing taxpayers to fund wars they oppose and the dangers of escalating local conflicts into global conflagrations is well-taken. However, I believe libertarians would benefit from engaging more...
After the debate, it seems there is no denying that Joe Biden has experienced significant decline over the last four years. There’s no need to devolve into diagnostics or gossip, but the fact of the matter is that Biden clearly isn’t as sharp as he was when he took office in 2020. This has left...
A century ago, the American marketplace of ideas provided the people with very different options in terms of public policy. The formal institutions looked similar. The same two political parties dominated the electoral system, benefitting from entrenched regional support. The Electoral College filtered the popular vote, which reflected the people’s will through decentralized and fraud-resistant...
The Federal Reserve is trying to engineer a gradual disinflation. It is getting outright deflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) decreased 0.1 percent in June. Consumer prices have grown 3.0 percent over the last year, which is the lowest 12-month rate since March 2021. Core CPI, which excludes...
The US central bank, called the Federal Reserve, was created in 1913. No one promoted this institution with the slogan that it would make wars more likely and guarantee that nearly half a million Americans will die in battle in foreign lands, along with millions of foreign soldiers and civilians. No one pointed out that...
“Activist, far-right justices have once again abandoned the Supreme Court’s bedrock commitment to precedent,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., announced after the Supreme Court’s June 28 decision in Loper Bright v. Raimondo. “With this ill-advised decision, judges must no longer defer to the decisions about Americans’ health, safety, and welfare made by agencies with technical and...
Everyone seems to like the Olympics. Every two years, people rally behind their country’s athletes and root for them even in the most unusual sports we usually don’t pay much attention to. This year, though, it seems like everyone likes the Olympics except the French, since 44 percent of Parisians believe hosting the Olympics is...
Every few weeks, the environmental zealots of the organization “Just Stop Oil” make headlines for trying to destroy something important to bring attention to their goal of stopping oil. 🚨Breaking News🚨 What appear to be @JustStop_Oil supporters are spraying orange paint on the stones of Stonehenge. pic.twitter.com/mgGFXb2beZ — David Atherton (@DaveAtherton20) June 19, 2024 It...
Constituting America recently featured Dr. Alex Tokarev, an economics and philosophy professor at Northwood University, on its Constitutional Chats podcast. Constituting America is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating Americans about the Constitution and the rights and liberties it provides for all. Tokarev was an ideal guest for Constituting America’s latest Constitutional Chats podcast, which...