Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
09 Dec 2025 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, economic growth, economic history, fiscal policy, income redistribution, labour economics, labour supply, macroeconomics, Public Choice, public economics Tags: ageing society, Germany
A lot has happened if you look at the past 100 years of German economic policy. Hyperinflation leading to Hitler’s National Socialists taking power. An impressive free-market revival after World War II. A growing welfare state after the imposition of a value-added tax in the 1960s. Some semi-impressive spending restraint starting in the mid-1990s. Very […]
Germany’s Accelerating Fiscal and Economic Decline
07 Dec 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, history of economic thought, labour economics, labour supply, poverty and inequality
A quarter century ago, economist Price Fishback published “Operations of ‘Unfettered’ Labor Markets: Exit and Voice in American Labor Markets at the Turn of the Century” 1,762 more words
Unfettered: Fishback 25 Years Later
05 Dec 2025 Leave a comment
in business cycles, econometerics, economic history, economics of bureaucracy, macroeconomics, monetary economics, politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: monetary policy
From a forthcoming paper by Thomas Drechsel: This paper combines new data and a narrative approach to identify variation in political pressure on the Federal Reserve. From archival records, I build a data set of personal interactions between U.S. Presidents and Fed officials between 1933 and 2016. Since personal interactions do not necessarily reflect political…
Political pressure on the Fed
03 Dec 2025 Leave a comment
in budget deficits, economic growth, economic history, financial economics, fiscal policy, macroeconomics, population economics, public economics Tags: ageing society, Japan, population bust
I often get asked when the United States will suffer a Greek-style fiscal crisis. My answer is always “I don’t know,” though I freely admit we are heading in that direction. My lack of specificity isn’t merely because economists are lousy forecasters. I tell people it’s all about investor sentiment, and it’s hard to know […]
Japan’s Growing Burden of Government Means an Inevitable Fiscal Crisis
02 Dec 2025 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: American Civil War
01 Dec 2025 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, war and peace Tags: Japan, World War II
30 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economic history, Marxist economics, war and peace Tags: Cold War, fall of communism
(Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1987. He had considerable influence in global affairs, both before and long after his official tour of duty in the White House.Credit) When I was a graduate student in the early 1970s I was enrolled in a 20th century diplomatic history course. The professor, a Holocaust survivor from Eastern Europe with a […]
ZBIG: THE LIFE OF ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, AMERICA’S GREAT POWER PROFIT by Edward Luce
29 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, Austrian economics, comparative institutional analysis, development economics, economic history, economics of information, entrepreneurship, F.A. Hayek, history of economic thought, industrial organisation, law and economics, Ludwig von Mises, market efficiency, property rights, survivor principle, Thomas Sowell
27 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, growth disasters, growth miracles, health economics Tags: child mortality, life expectancies, The Great Escape
25 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in development economics, economic history, growth disasters, growth miracles Tags: The Great Enrichment
22 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, history of economic thought, labour economics, labour supply
In my own family, the reverence that we have for the dishwasher (and other time-saving devices) is such that we have a cat named “Josephine” after the Josephine Cochrane–the inventor of the first commercially viable dishwasher. (Also named because, as a kitten, she liked to forage in the back of the dishwasher.) Erin Braid provides…
Dishwashers and the 24/7 Time Constraint
18 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in econometerics, economic history Tags: housing affordability, The Great Enrichment
Wayne Jackson writes – The 50th anniversary of New Zealand’s Household Economic Survey (HES) provides a unique vantage point to assess how far households have come in terms of income, expenditure, and wealth accumulation. Comparing 1974 with 2024 reveals a story of rising prosperity, shifting household structures, and widening disparities. From dual‑income households to skyrocketing […]
50 years of economic progress – but are New Zealand households better off?
14 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in economic growth, economic history, macroeconomics Tags: European Union
The Constitution of Innovation The continent faces two options. By the middle of this century, it could follow the path of Argentina: its enormous prosperity a distant memory; its welfare states bankrupt and its pensions unpayable; its politics stuck between extremes that mortgage the future to save themselves in the present; and its brightest gone…
Europe at a crossroad
12 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in economic history, fiscal policy, macroeconomics, Public Choice, public economics
The case against the value-added tax (VAT) is not complicated. Simply stated, this hidden type of national sales tax was a key precursor for the expansion of the European welfare state. As you can see in the chart, the burden of government spending in Europe after World War II was similar to the size of […]
The Value-Added Tax: A Recipe for More Spending…and More Debt: Part II
12 Nov 2025 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, entrepreneurship, history of economic thought Tags: creative destruction
The growth of industry disrupted old economic patterns but produced undreamed-of wealthBy Phil Gramm and Michael Solon. Excerpts:”From the colossal changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution to the Digital Revolution of the last quarter-century, improvements in technology have created an array of jobs that far exceeded—in quantity and quality—the ones eliminated, elevating standards of living.””the…
The AI Revolution Will Bring Prosperity
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
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Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
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Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
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Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
Celebrating humanity's flourishing through the spread of capitalism and the rule of law
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