Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
Maybe the secret ingredient to a freer, more prosperous society is simple: respect for choice, in business and beyond. Flower Mound, Texas, is about thirty miles northwest of Dallas. It straddles two counties: Denton, in which Trump won 56 percent of the vote, and Tarrant, which was evenly split between Trump and Harris in 2024. … Read more
Tycoons might be lining up to appease Donald Trump, but stocks are traded on economic reality. Thank God for the stock market. The market is one of the only things Donald Trump can be expected to listen to—likely more than polls and certainly more than his advisers—even when he doesn’t want to hear what it’s … Read more
When President Donald Trump won a second term in November, the economy topped most voters’ concerns. Many felt the pain of higher prices, and they voted with their wallets. Trump talked repeatedly about runaway grocery prices during the campaign, pledging that if elected, paying over $4 for a carton of eggs would be a thing … Read more
Politicians want to create jobs, “good-paying union jobs,” in existing industries. But that’s not what markets do. The “destructive” part of creative destruction eliminates jobs in existing industries. In a dynamic economy, innovations in division of labor can create good-paying jobs in new industries, but new industries require entrepreneurs, not politicians. Frederic Bastiat had two … Read more
The Wendy’s Baconator is a beast of a burger. Introduced in 2007 as part of a back-to-basics rebranding of the perpetual fast-food underdog, the Baconator consists of a half-pound of beef, multiple slices of gooey American cheese, and six pieces of bacon, plus condiments. It contains 57 grams of protein and just shy of a … Read more
Christmas is the season of joy, gatherings, and gift-giving. Streets sparkle with festive lights, and the spirit of celebration fills the air. Yet amid the cheer, there are always a few Grinches and Scrooges in every family — those who grumble about the neighbors or lament about how things were “better” in the past. In … Read more
To reject foreign investment is to impoverish our country—missing out on more capital, productivity, and higher wages for our own workers. Nippon Steel—Japan’s largest steelmaker—has offered to buy U.S. Steel for $14.1 billion, and all the people who count are frothing at the mouth. For example, President Biden has stated: “U.S. Steel has been an … Read more
I recite this litany fairly often, but it bears repeating: The U.S. economy is really, really remarkable. As much as Americans bitch and moan about the price of a gallon of gas or a dozen eggs, as dour and down-in-the-mouth as we can be about our economy, examining the actual economic facts leads to an … Read more
In truth, government spending is not inherently efficient or effective. As a new year dawns, it’s customary to reflect on the past and set resolutions for the future. This year, let’s resolve to greet three widespread claims with healthy doses of skepticism. The first dubious claim is that income inequality in the United States has … Read more
My favorite social-media post in recent weeks (from a Seattle-based engineer named Grant Slatton) seems esoteric, but is quite insightful: “We don’t talk enough about how insane aluminum foil is. Imagine telling some ancient person we have so much abundance in our time that we use very thin metal as a disposable paper-like wrapping and … Read more
In the December 2022 issue of First Things, editor Rusty Reno starts off with a doozy. Capitalism is best understood as the modern ambition to order and value all available resources solely on the basis of market principles. If the intent was to demonstrate the inadequacy of using the word “capitalism” to describe a properly ordered vision … Read more
If you have health insurance but no primary care physician, the process for getting a physical can be a bit complicated. Whether or not you get your health insurance through an employer, you’ll probably have to find a practice in your area that is in your network. Then you’ll have to find out if it’s … Read more
In my family’s humble but enthusiastic opinion, Saigon Noodle House is one of the Birmingham area’s culinary treasures–indeed, as I type this, we have a delivery of delicious pho and spring rolls scheduled for about an hour and a half from now. The original location on Highway 280 still does a thriving business, but the … Read more
The Hockey Stick of Human Prosperity (MRU – Don Boudreaux
Tom here identifies yet another danger posed by state obstruction of peaceful activities. People are not pawns on a chessboard which, when moved from here to there by the visible hand, remain obediently in place until moved again by the visible hand. Instead, each of us has desires that we wish to fulfill and, when … Read more
. . . is from page 3 of Virginia Postrel’s 2020 book, The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World (footnote deleted): But, to reverse Arthur C. Clarke’s famous adage about magic, any sufficiently familiar technology is indistinguishable from nature. It seems intuitive, obvious – so woven into the fabric of our lives that … Read more
Today, capitalism seems unattractive to the young because it is stacked against them. America’s current outsiders will have far better lives in a free system, however, than in any new socialism, which would invariably privilege connected apparatchiks (among the other failings it would bring). The cause of freedom will need to present itself as a … Read more
In 1977, Bob Chitester decided to try something bold. A long time owner and general manager of a pair of public broadcasters in Erie, Pennsylvania—the NPR station WQLN-FM and the PBS channel WQLN-TV—Chitester decided he wanted to create something different. So he persuaded the Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, along with his wife Rose, to … Read more
Russ Roberts writes, I think a lot of people are attracted to socialism because they believe it means capitalism without the parts they don’t like. How to get there from here is left unspecified. I think that this critique needs to be made more often. When Marx says “from each according to his abilities, to … Read more
The coronavirus is having a profound impact on our economies. Faced with economic downturns, governments have traditionally attempted to spur employment and restore economic health by propping up aggregate demand. Scholars differ on the track record of these interventions, yet all agree that governments, by stimulating demand, aim to provoke productive activity. Today, though, rather … Read more
Hard times indeed are hard, and that adjective is wholly inadequate to describe the double whammy now afflicting U.S. crude-oil producers: declining demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the large increase in overseas production attendant upon the flood-the-market tug-of-war between the Russians and the Saudis. As a result, the domestic price of crude oil … Read more
I don’t pretend to know anything about rare-earth minerals, but it’s laughable to think the Small Business Administration is a wellspring of innovation, and there’s plenty of evidence that paid parental leave is bad policy (child tax credits aren’t bad, but there are other tax policies that are far better for families). . . . … Read more