Utopia, you are standing in it!

Why are some nations rich and other nations poor? What has enabled some nations to escape poverty while others continue to languish?

And if we want to help poor nations prosper, what’s the right recipe?

Since I’m a public finance economist, I’m tempted to say a flat tax and small government are an elixir for prosperity, but those policies are just one piece of a bigger puzzle.

A country also needs sensible monetary policy, open trade, modest regulation, and rule of law. In other words, you need small government AND free markets.

But even that doesn’t really tell us what causes growth.

In the past, I’ve highlighted the importance of capital formation and shared a remarkable chart showing how workers earn more when the capital stock is larger (which is why we should avoid punitive double taxation of income that is saved and invested).

But that also doesn’t…

When I wrote about “crazy Bernie Sanders” in 2016, I wasn’t just engaging in literary hyperbole. The Vermont Senator is basically an unreconstructed leftist with a disturbing affinity for crackpot ideas and totalitarian regimes.

His campaign agenda that year was an orgy of new taxes and higher spending.

Though it’s worth noting that he’s at least crafty enough to steer clear of pure socialism. He wants massive increases in taxes, spending, and regulation, but even he doesn’t openly advocate government ownership of factories.

Then again, there probably wouldn’t be any factories to nationalize if Sanders was ever successful in saddling the nation with a Greek-sized public sector.

He’s already advocated a “Medicare-for-All” scheme with a 10-year price tag of $15 trillion, for instance. And now he has a new multi-trillion dollar proposal for guaranteed jobs.

In a column for the Washington Post…

Author and speaker Alex Epstein spoke via Skype at the World Taxpayer Conference during 2014 on the morality of resource development and the fallacy of sustainability.

Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School is the latest collection of essays from Ralph Raico, published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Ralph was kind enough to send me a print copy.

The introductory, eponymous essay concerns the relationship between Austrianism as an economic methodology and classical liberalism as a political program or ideology. Raico disputes Mises’ contention that Austrian methodology (methodological individualism) is clearly separate from the normative claims of classical liberalism (2-3). Raico builds a persuasive case that Austrianism as traditionally understood is indeed naturally related to classical liberalism; however, I would argue that this implication is not entirely to the credit of traditional Austrianism.

First, let us take methodological individualism. Modern neoclassical economics is as thoroughly methodologically individualist as Austrianism ever was. But note that both neoclassical and Austrian economists depart from methodological individualism when convenient to do so, for instance when deploying the firm as a…

Prof Assaf Razin of Tel Aviv Univ researches the impact of the immigration in this  piece:

Hmm.. A lot depends on the type of immigration…

My only claim to fame in regards to colonial scholarship rests on a paper I wrote for an Honors course in Western Civilization as an undergraduate. The paper won a spot at an Honors consortium held at Stanford, so I was able to do even more research on the subject. The following post is a summation of my research in blog form.

The first task I have is to explain what colonialism is not. Colonialism is not a European invention or concept designed specifically to keep non-white people down. The myth of the evil white colonialist is one of the most pernicious myths espoused today, and for a couple of big reasons. The first reason is that colonialism has been around for a long time. Today, the Han practice colonialism through the fascist Chinese state. In the 19th century, the Ashanti practiced colonialism throughout their slave-trading empire. The Ottoman…

A talent sorely missed. This documentary was broadcast in 2014 shortly after Williams untimely death.

When Al Gore released An Inconvenient Truth, the world went into a global warming hysteria. Twelve years later, much of the world has spotted the ruse, but some still proclaim that fossil fuels will doom mankind. Dr. Jay Lehr of the Heartland Institute highlights a specific moment in Gore’s film and dismantles the shockingly false claims.

Kenneth Clark (1903-1983) was an distinguished British art historian and museum conservator. His most well-known work is the landmark thirteen episode BBC documentary series Civilisation: A Personal View that was broadcast on the network during 1969. While Clark focuses on his specialty, the visual arts, he also highlights the profound relation between art and religion during most of the historical period covered in the documentary and its companion book.

In light of PBS’s awful, relativistic program Civilizations, Clark’s mini-series is a refreshing alternative made by a man who was passionate about Western art and culture. Fortunately, he was educated prior to the cultural Marxism and self-loathing that has infected the West.

Kenneth Clark refused to apologize for his love of Western Civilization and its obvious superiority to other cultures and neither should we. Let Clark’s work stand as a clarion call for the civilized to stand tall and…

I have posted this before but thought it appropriate since today is the anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth. A few years ago the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) hosted a unique speech by Clemson University’s BB&T Research Professor C. Bradley Thompson entitled: Why Marxism?. Professor Thompson’s lecture is an examination on why Marxism still lives and appeals to many despite its totalitarian and genocidal history.

As Greenpeace co-founder Dr. Patrick Moore has pointed out, the environmentalist movement received an influx of Communists soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Environmentalism is the new communism and the best way to defeat it is to understand its core, Marxism, (which is based on envy and hatred) including its appeal.

Berke Breathed at Bloom County found a way!!!