Topic: Economic History

The Past Is a Nice Place to Visit. You Wouldn’t Want to Live There.

– July 18, 2019

Should we study and learn from the past? Of course we should. Should we yearn for the past, seek to return there, and perhaps undo the progress of the last several centuries? Of course we shouldn’t.

Economic History, Free Markets

The Capitalist Achievement of Recorded Music

– July 17, 2019

Or in the musical context, the capitalist achievement consists not of softer seats at the opera for the king and queen but access to a practically infinite library for pennies a day.

Economic History, Free Banking

Competition Is the Path to Financial Inclusion

– July 8, 2019

Financial regulators appear to fear the creation of a few, small experimental entrants more than they fear the failure of the nation’s many, uber-risky megabanks.

Economic History

How to Do Reparations the Right Way

– June 26, 2019

What African-Americans, poor whites, and Native Americans want, and what they need, is what Adam Smith called “a tolerable administration of justice.”

Economic History

The Statistical Errors of the Reparations Agenda

– June 23, 2019

There is a great moral gravity to discussions of slavery. Academics owe the public an honest, accurate, and scientific assessment of slavery’s history, including its economic dimensions. Unfortunately, a key statistic being used in the reparations debate fails that test.

Economic History, Socialism

The Failure of Liberal Democracy in Europe

– June 16, 2019

What needs rethinking is not capitalism – much less the ideals of universal human rights and liberties – but the corruption of liberalism by a state that knows no limits to its powers.

Economic History, Economic Trends, Philosophy

New Evidence that Soaring Inequality is a Myth

– June 14, 2019

Alarmists insist inequality is skyrocketing in the United States. A new measure of the top one percent’s wealth should temper that claim

Economic History, Philosophy

Don’t Trust Inequality Data: A Lesson from the UK

– May 28, 2019

The progressive zeal for higher taxes is distorting how they construct inequality statistics.

Economic History

Freedom Is Why Immigrants Come to America

– May 21, 2019

The danger in American society today is not the arrival of new waves of immigrants from various other parts of the world compared to the past.

Economic History

Two Grand Traditions in Financial History

– May 17, 2019

Before New York acquired its status as the financial center of the world, the honor of that title was reserved for London and, before then, Amsterdam for roughly a century each.

Economic History

Stateless in the Walled City of Kowloon

– May 14, 2019

Are lovers of liberty ever to turn our faces toward the sun, standing on truly free soil? Remembering the Walled City of Kowloon should energize our determined, but peaceful, fight.

Economic Education, Economic History

There’s No Such Thing as Socially Harmful Speculation

– May 10, 2019

Financial markets, including markets for complex instruments that may just look like speculative casino bets, allow important real transactions to occur. And in a brilliantly decentralized way, they bring into harmony people whose information, values, goals, and risk aversion differ.