This episode features a presentation by economics professor Donald Boudreaux from 2013. Legend has it that capitalism might deliver lots of convenient and wonderful material goods and services, but that one of the costs of these benefits is a more polluted and less agreeable environment. This legend is false. Capitalism is history’s greatest anti-pollutant — in ways that most of us take for granted.
Tag: economics
Los Angeles: Homelessness Meets Economics 101
“The stunning increase in homelessness announced in Los Angeles this week — up 16% over last year citywide,” reports CNN, “was an almost incomprehensible conundrum given the nation’s booming economy and the hundreds of millions of dollars that city, county and state officials have directed toward the problem.”
Trade, Tariffs, and some Basic Economics
Economics can be a complicated subject and many people don’t really understand why the economy works the way it does. That’s okay, but learning about economics and economic principles can also be very rewarding because it helps to explain so much about our world and about human behavior.
Trump’s Trade Policy—A Reductio ad Absurdum
Let’s consider the president’s trade policy in, as it were, its very best light. Suppose, then, that the government succeeded in eliminating the trade deficit entirely. Residents of the USA would continue to sell huge quantities of goods to foreigners but buy nothing at all from foreign sellers. The trade deficit would be not only diminished but wiped out and replaced by a huge trade surplus. Trumpian triumph!
American Militias after the Civil War: From Black Codes to the Black Panthers and Beyond
The Civil War (1861-1865) was nothing less than a revolutionary reorganization of American government, society, and economics. It claimed almost as many lives as every other U.S. conflict combined and, by war’s bloody logic, forged the nation which the Founding Fathers could not by settling once and for all lingering national questions about state sovereignty and slavery.
Letter from an “Anti-School Teacher”
I recently read The Case Against Education and it explained so much of what I see. Like many new graduates who do not know exactly what they want to do but want to do something that helps people, I became a teacher right after college. I have spent the last year teaching math at a high school in Chicago. Observing how unlikely it was that the decisions we make increase our students human capital, I wondered how it could be of benefit to the students. Your book helped me answer that question.
Trump’s “Trade War” is a War on You
Punitive tariffs on Chinese and other foreign goods are simply corporate welfare. They are a mechanism for redistribution of wealth from American consumers and workers to the most politically connected American business owners. Those businesses can charge more for their product and still remain “competitive” because their product doesn’t have that extra tax levied on it.
Edward Stringham: Do We Need Government? (1h15m)
This episode features a lecture by economics professor Edward Stringham from 2009. Should government provide law enforcement? Most would argue that government is absolutely necessary for law enforcement. Prof. Stringhman, however, argues that government may not even be necessary at all. To come to this conclusion, Prof. Stringham asks a few important questions. First, if something is really important, does it logically follow that government should provide it? Second, are markets capable of providing law enforcement and security in the modern world? Third, how are disputes currently settled between people of different countries?
Tom Woods: The Economics of the Police State (39m)
This episode features a lecture by historian and Austro-libertarian Tom Woods from 2014. In the modern United States, federal laws are now so numerous and written so broadly and vaguely, that it is nearly impossible to make it through the day without breaking at least one of them. And through it all, an enormous government apparatus of prisons, prosecutors, police, and bureaucrats remains well-funded, powerful, and nearly impossible to oppose in court.
The Noble Crony: Big Business on the Politics of Business
There are major policies where the business community prevails over the popular will. Indeed, there are major policies that would be helpless political orphans without the patronage of business elites. But happily, business has both prudence and justice on its side.