Utopia, you are standing in it!

I’m happy to discuss theory when debating economic policy, but I mostly focus on real-world evidence.

That’s because my friends on the left always have a hard time answering my two-question challenge, which simply asks them to name one success story for big government.

They usually point to Sweden and Denmark, but get discouraged when I point out that those nations became rich when government was relatively small.

And I’m embarrassed to admit that some of my fellow economists once thought that communist nations grew faster than capitalist nations.

But let’s not digress. I raise this topic because there are many critics of capitalism who admit that free markets generate more wealth, but they assert that society would be better off if incomes were lower so long as rich people suffered more than poor people.

This strikes me as morally poisonous. But it also gives me an opportunity…

In the summer of 1727 George I died while fittingly on holiday in his beloved kingdom of Hanover. The crown was left to his first-born son, George Augustus Prince of Wales. Like his father before him, George II was a stolid man. Today, both men are remembered mainly as pig-headed dullards, renowned for their mutual disgust of one another. George II was a soldier through and through -he was the last English King to lead his troops in battle at Dettingen in 1743- and he had little taste for the arts (or “boets and bainters” as he called them) despite a lifelong love of music, particularly the works of Handel and donating the royal library to the British Museum which was founded during his reign. During his long kingship, Britain expanded its colonial and mercantile interests far and wide from India to the American colonies, however through it all George…

1066 – Following the death of Harold II at the Battle of Hastings, Edgar the Ætheling is proclaimed King of England by the Witan; he is never crowned, and concedes power to William the Conqueror two months later.

Edgar Ætheling or Edgar II (c. 1052 – 1125 or after) was the last male member of the royal house of Cerdic of Wessex (see House of Wessex family tree). He was elected King of England by the Witenagemot in 1066, but never crowned.

Edgar was born in the Kingdom of Hungary, where his father Edward the Exile, son of King Edmund Ironside, had spent most of his life, having been sent into exile after Edmund’s death and the conquest of England by the Danish king Cnut the Great in 1016.

Edgar II the Ætheling, King of the English

His grandfather Edmund, great-grandfather Æthelred II the Unready, and great-great-grandfather Edgar the Peaceful…

(Special Operations Chief Edward “Eddie” Gallagher, a highly decorated Navy SEAL, is fighting murder charges tied to the death of an Islamic State operative in Iraq).

It is clear that after recent events that the American experience in Afghanistan did not end well.  With the Taliban victory the future of the Afghan people, especially women are under a darkening cloud.  In this environment the American military approach in the region has come under question and many of the soldiers who fought and the families of those who died or suffered life altering injuries must be wondering if their sacrifices were in vain.  In this environment any book that deals with the American approach to war is timely.  David Philipps’ new book, ALPHA: EDDIE GALLAGHER AND THE WAR FOR THE SOUL OF THE NAVY SEALS fits this category.  Though the book focuses on the conduct of American troops in Mosul, Iraq…