Peter Jacobsen is a Writing Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.
Fifty years ago, Friedrich Hayek and Karl Gunnar Myrdal won the Nobel prize “for their pioneering work in the theory of money and economic fluctuations and for their penetrating analysis of the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena.” Hayek’s Nobel is notable for several reasons, and each relates to the importance of intellectual humility....
The US House of Representatives just passed H.R. 9495, the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act. As with most federal bills, the name is pretty sympathetic. Who doesn’t want to stop the funding of terrorism? It also contains two related, but very different, proposals. According to Congress’s official website: This bill postpones...
A few months ago I wrote a piece for FEE on Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei. Milei took on the presidency of Argentina with a particularly pressing challenge: government overspending was driving out-of-control money creation and its by-product—inflation. Milei’s goal was explicit. He promised to cut government largesse. In my article, I argued that his...
Back in August, an article in The Atlantic titled “Sometimes You Just Have to Ignore the Economists” stirred up controversy. The article, authored by Zephyr Teachout, was primarily focused on Kamala Harris’s recent support for price control laws. The article begins by claiming that Kamala isn’t proposing price controls in normal times; rather, she’s opposed...
For the last few years at FEE and National Review, I’ve spent quite a bit of energy talking about student loan forgiveness. The reason for my persistence on this topic is that the era of Covid policy has completely turned the tables on how student loans are managed. Before Covid, student loan policies were relatively...
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...
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...
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...
One of the major critiques of free markets is that certain industries, like healthcare, are “too important” to be left to the self-interested forces of the market. Critics of a free market in healthcare argue that for-profit healthcare businesses will tend to ignore patients who have higher costs unless those patients are willing to pay...
In his book Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt makes a famous distinction between good and bad economists: The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond. The bad economist sees only the direct consequences of a proposed course; the good economist looks also at the longer and...
Off and on over the last two years, we’ve heard from major media outlets about something called a “vibecession.” The idea behind a vibecession is straightforward. Many people say they “feel” like we’re in a very bad moment economically, despite the fact that inflation has begun to slow relative to its worst levels (granted, prices...
You probably saw the recent headlines. Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a new bill that he claims will reduce weekly working hours from 40 to 32. This would move workers from needing to work five 8-hour days to only four. But you haven’t heard the best part. You’d get paid exactly the same amount as before!...
To start off “Ask an Economist” for the year, I have a question from Stan K. about the national debt. I’m happy to report that after asking for questions in early January, I have received the most ever. I look forward to working through all I can. Here is Stan’s question: Peter, I often bemoan...
In 2023, FEE supported a series of articles by me titled Ask an Economist. Over the course of the year, I answered 16 questions. In this article, I wanted to highlight a few of the questions and answers I received throughout the year. After that, I want to talk about the future of the Ask...