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We are often told that 40 million Americans lack health insurance, and that this is a scandal caused by greedy health care providers in the private sector constantly raising health care costs. This simply must be true because it is told to us by Those Who Care. Of course, there is much more to this story than the storytellers let on. Many of the

It’s finally dawning on commentators that the economy is in pretty sorry shape. Stock valuations have fallen 33% since Bush became president; investors are still withdrawing money; consumer sentiment is at historic lows; consumer debt is at historic highs; we face the worst hiring slump in twenty years; production as measured by the GDP minus

Stealing is wrong.  It makes private property less secure and requires the diversion of otherwise productive resources to the uses necessary to reduce stealing in the future.  Stealing appropriates the fruits of someone else’s labor without his permission.   Nonetheless, those who are in the news for pilfering the shuttle debris that rained down

“The way to eternal peace does not lead through strengthening state and central power, as socialism strives for.”  Ludwig von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy , p. 96. The market system is based on voluntary exchanges that result in interdependencies that, over time, make war all but impossible. This is why governments that intend to bring about

Many supported the war in Iraq due to the supposed increase in security we will experience at home once Saddam is out of the picture. But who really feels safer in the its aftermath? Why do government’s warnings of impending doom seem to be increasing rather than decreasing? Why has the government even put up a new website ( www.ready.gov ) that

The Wall Street Journal recently ran a front page story focusing on the question, “Why does this recovery feel more like a recession?” Likewise, the Chicago Tribune asked in an editorial, “Why has it been so difficult to get this economy out of first gear? More to the point, when will this fitful, uneven growth begin to feel like a recovery?”

You have achieved a level of notoriety in economics when a line or law is named after you. Say what you want to say about Say’s Law, but most of us at least know the pithy five-word version, “Supply creates its own demand”—which constitutes a considerable abridgment from J.B. Say’s original exposition, which turned 200 years old this year.

  “That the sole object and only legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property, and when the government assumes other functions it is usurpation and oppression.”  --  Section 35, Alabama Constitution of 1901.   Last Week, voters in Alabama resoundingly rejected Gov. Bob Riley’s tax plan by a

Did anyone shed tears for Richard A. Grasso? That embattled little man who resigned from his job as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange was at loggerheads with the New York Stock Exchange Board about his retirement pay package of $188 million, a huge sum that was nonetheless contractually agreed to over his years of service. For the vast

The Washington Post ‘s Jonathan Weisman recently scored a front page story about President Bush that would have galvanized D.C. conservatives three years earlier if the same words had been written about President Clinton. Writes Weisman: Confounding President Bush’s pledges to rein in government growth, federal discretionary spending expanded by