Economics
Economics, Politics & Rights
Gwyneth Paltrow’s SNAP Food Stamp Farce
Ari Armstrong April 14, 2015
The deeper problem with Paltrow’s cause is that it presumes that taking wealth from some people by force and handing it to others is moral. It is not. Individuals have a moral right to use their wealth as they see fit. In no case may government morally seize people’s wealth by force and turn it over to others.
Economics
A Penny for Your Thoughts: “Liberty Parent of Science & Industry”
Craig Biddle March 30, 2015
A 1792 U.S. penny, designed in part by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, reads “Liberty Parent of Science & Industry.”
Economics, Reviews
Stuff Matters, by Mark Miodownik
Daniel Wahl February 20, 2015
Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials that Shape Our Modern World, by Mark Miodownik. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. 272 pp. $16.45 (hardcover). Reviewed by Daniel Wahl In May 1985, a young Mark Miodownik sat on a train, with a fresh thirteen-centimeter stab wound in his back, and thought…
Economics, Politics & Rights
Piketty's Rickety Assault on Capital
Richard M. Salsman February 20, 2015
“Piketty’s Rickety Assault on Capital” dismantles and dispatches Thomas Piketty’s arguments against free markets and the principle of rights, including the “fuzzy math in Piketty’s alleged laws of capitalism.
Ayn Rand & Objectivism, Economics
A Conservative’s Muddled Thinking on Ayn Rand and Property
Ari Armstrong December 20, 2014
Contrary to Jonathan Coppage’s claims, services in a market economy are fundamentally dependent on the ownership of property—both physical and intellectual—not somehow untethered from it. The Hank Reardens of the world, the industrial “makers” whom Coppage demeans, continue to play a fundamental role in the economy, and they always will.
Economics
The Equality Equivocation
Craig Biddle November 20, 2014
Addresses a key aspect of the left's "equality" agenda that muddies Americans' thinking on the issue and enables the left to turn people's good intentions against their genuine interests.
Economics
The Banality of a Leftist: Thomas Piketty
Raymond C. Niles September 30, 2014
Piketty stirs up resentment against the producers and holders of wealth, and then says we need to tax it away to assuage that resentment. Instead, as an economist, he should be explaining why wealth is good and how, in the hands of those who know how to invest it profitably, it leads to prosperity for everyone involved in the economy.
Economics
New Technologies, Same Old Fallacies
Ari Armstrong August 10, 2014
True, new technologies make some jobs obsolete. But new technologies also make possible new careers. Moreover, because producers who employ new technologies manufacture more and better products at lower costs, their customers have money left to spend in expanded or entirely new industries.
Ayn Rand & Objectivism, Economics
Economists’ “Subjective Value” and Ayn Rand’s Objective Value Reconciled
Ari Armstrong June 22, 2014
Unfortunately, when some economists think of values as “subjective,” they assume that there is no objective standard for determining moral value; they assume that value is only a matter of personal opinion.
Economics
Rand’s Ethics and Say’s Law
Craig Biddle June 2, 2014
Whereas rational ethics holds that if you want the values on which your life and happiness depend, you must take the actions necessary to gain and keep those values; rational economics holds that if you want to trade value for value in the marketplace, you must first produce value with which to trade.