An award-winning up-and-comer in free enterprise thought leadership, Kristin Tokarev is a producer for John Stossel at Stossel TV. She enjoys covering topics in public policy, market trends, and individual liberty. Kristin earned a B.B.A. in economics and an M.S. in Business Analytics from Northwood University, where she served as a research scholar at the University’s Center for the Advancement of Free Enterprise and Entrepreneurship. Since graduating, Kristin has mentored several Northwood University Freedom Seminar students by co-authoring monthly essays for Northwood’s online global platform, True North, and When Free to Choose, Northwood’s signature publication dedicated to exploring the importance of free enterprise.
After World War II, Germany was in ruins. Cities leveled, infrastructure destroyed, tens of millions killed or severely injured, morale shattered… The Nazi regime had left behind not only devastation, but a command-and-control economy riddled with inflation and rationing. Police forces were gutted by the Allied regime. Theft and black markets became a way of...
As America approaches her 250th birthday, it’s worth asking: What made this country exceptional? How did a handful of rebellious colonies become a global symbol of freedom and opportunity? The answer isn’t complicated — it’s the ideas at the foundation of our Republic. The American experiment was history’s boldest bet on liberty. Instead of rule...
What causes revolutionary change? What drives history forward? When we think of the American War of Independence, we correctly give credit to the ideas put forth by Enlightened thinkers who reshaped the way people thought about liberty, justice, and equality. Ideas that began in the Old World were reconsidered and reformulated in the New World...
Just 50 years ago, China was one of the poorest countries on Earth. Many of its people lived in mud-brick homes. Most were undernourished. Everyone was trapped in a rigid communist system that crushed initiative. Today, it is the world’s second-largest economy by some measures, home to gleaming megacities and the largest middle class by...
By A. Noel Tokarev, Kristin Tokarev, Li Schoolland, Adriel Sanchez, Nathan Kniesteadt
As in 1989, the world seems to be shifting beneath our feet. The second coming of Trump to the White House has rattled the global order. Whether it’s trade or defense, we observe a rapid realigning of strategic partnerships in all corners of the earth in the face of growing uncertainties. At the epicenter of...
Note: This piece co-authored by a Northwood University economics professor and alumna now working at Stossel TV, originally was posted by Learn Liberty, which is powered by Students for Liberty. Say what you want about Donald Trump: The man is creative. Really creative. Two of his recent proposals sound like the late-night infomercial between the...
“It is because every individual knows little … that we trust the independent and competitive efforts of many to induce the emergence of what we shall want when we see it.” The Nobel Prize-winning Austrian-born economist and political philosopher Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992) left a rich legacy of books and articles brimming with insights and...
Two out of five people view socialism positively. In 2025. In America! It’s as if the twentieth century never happened. The Holodomor? The Great Leap Forward? The Cultural Revolution? More than a hundred million victims in less than a hundred years? Gone from our collective memory. We’re told, again, that socialism is the answer to...
Two hundred years ago, Britain made a big mistake — and then fixed it. That’s something America should pay attention to. In the early 1800s, British politicians (mostly aristocrats) passed the Corn Laws, tariffs on imported grain. Who benefited from these restrictions? The wealthy landowners — by reaping higher rents. The result was higher food...
New York City, the bastion of global capitalism, is on the verge of electing its first socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. Many of his socialist visions for the metropolis fail basic economics. Worst of all is his proposal to freeze the price of rent. It ignores decades of empirical evidence that rent control harms the very residents Mamdani...
Anew civil war is brewing. Texas is redistricting its electoral map to help a few Republican candidates in 2026. Democrats in California, New York, and Illinois are threatening retaliatory manipulations of their own. How does gerrymandering work? What shall we do about it? In our Republic, voters are supposed to choose their public servants. With...
President Donald Trump gave the Left one more reason to call him a “fascist” by sending the National Guard to Washington, D.C. Some of Trump’s own supporters are also expressing their frustration with the measures, pointing out that the American Republic was founded in principled opposition to the use of standing armies to police its...
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...
Less than seven weeks before the elections, the Federal Reserve decided to cut the interest rates aggressively – by 50 basis points. But inflation is still above its target. And the Fed has yet to receive distress signals from the labor, housing, or stock markets. So, what does that mean for you? The candidates? The...