Labor and Wages

By abolishing the weekend, the Soviets were in one move able to strike a blow against both families and religious institutions. All that was left was the state — and state-mandated labor.

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel joins Bob Murphy for an in-depth discussion of the economics of slavery, touching on subtleties such as the labor/leisure trade-off, and the recent claims by some historians that slavery was efficient.

Some politicians are sure that even average Americans are working more grueling hours than ever. On average we have more leisure time than ever now, and working hours are down over the past 20 years.

The high cost of living in California — fueled by government regulations and taxes on the middle class — means the state now has some of the worst poverty and homelessness of any state.

In the second half of the twentieth century, pro-union and anti-trade policies led to a Rust Belt that became uncompetitive, costly, and unable to cope with reality. More protectionism won't save the region now.

Workers get paid now, but the capitalists only get paid if there is a profit. This is why workers aren't paid 100 percent of the value of their output. For them, there is far less risk than for the capitalist.

Supporters of the universal basic income claim it ends dependence on markets, bosses, family, and bureaucrats. But it doesn't eliminate dependence. It only transfers dependence to the central state.

More than half of the people in the world currently live in urban areas or cities, in spite of it being more expensive to do so. Why?

If violence is the key to creating wealth, as Desmond insinuates, then the communist nations would have created fabulous amounts of wealth given the brutality of 20th-century Stalinism.

New technologies, not the state, will be the key to making it ever easier to meet basic needs and diminish the perceived need for more government services.