Economics

Adv.--Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy
by Thomas Sowell

From one of America's best-known economists, the one book anyone who wants to understand the economy needs to read. At last there is a citizen's guide to the economy, written by an economist who uses plain English. No jargon, no graphs, no equations. Yet this is a comprehensive survey, covering everything from rent control and the rise and fall of businesses to the international balance of payments. The purpose of Basic Economics is to enable people without any economic training to understand the way the economy functions-not only the American economy, but other economies around the world.

Will The Federal Reserve Create The New Socialist Man?
Karen De Coster and Eric Englund explain the devastating cultural effects of fiat money and central banking. Americans are stepping up to mainline a new kind of drug known as debt. Instant money, after all, is something that provides on-the-spot gratification and pacifies their anxieties about their status in the social order. Indeed, one can have it all, at the drop of a (fiat) coin, and without the standard save-and-wait period which earlier generations experienced.
Wal-Mart Warms to the State
The CEO of Wal-Mart surprised many by calling for an increase in the minimum wage, writes Lew Rockwell. It is a cartelization tactic that uses regulatory violence as a means of competition.
Government-Enhanced Disaster
The correlation between poverty and destruction resulting from natural disaster seems to hold up not only with a cross-section of nations, but also over time, writes Timothy Terrell.
Hail Estonia!
But America drops out of the top 10.
BY MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
Kill the goose that lays Rx eggs?
In a prime example of election year demagoguery, the Senate is considering legislation, already approved by the House, to legalize importing to the U.S. pharmaceuticals from dozens of countries around the world.
By Elizabeth M. Whelan
Self-inflicted poverty
Did you learn that the United States is rich because we have bountiful natural resources? That has to be nonsense.
by Walter E. Williams
Fill Her Up
The situation with soaring gas prices is better than you think. And worse.
by Irwin M. Stelzer
A Rite of Spring
William Anderson examines the common myths of the gas price increase, and then turns to the question of why prices are as high as they are.
The Power to Destroy
The Communist Manifesto pushed a heavily progressive income tax as one of ten key ways to undermine the market order, writes William Peterson.
Ignoring the Fear-Mongering about Outsourcing
From the way some people talk in this political season, you’d think all the good jobs are being shipped to India, leaving nothing for Americans to do but flip hamburgers and shine shoes.
by Sheldon Richman
A bargain at the pump?
The average price of a gallon of gasoline should exceed an all-time high very soon, according to government and industry analysts. Citing strong demand and tight supplies, they predict average prices could exceed $1.80 per gallon within the next 60 days. But before you start thinking the price of gasoline is highway robbery, consider the real cost.
By Pete du Pont
Who pays the taxes?
Just in time for tax season, the Congressional Budget Office has released new data on distribution of the tax burden. Contrary to popular belief, they show that taxes on the wealthy have risen over time and that the Bush tax cut in 2001 barely kept it from rising further.
by Bruce Bartlett
Minimum gasoline prices
Walter E. Williams exposes government complicity in business scam.
What's Up With Oil
A guide to why prices are so high.
Wall Street Journal Op-Ed
Smoot Operators
The Democrats embrace the policies that borught us the Depression.
BY PETE DU PONT
Greenspan's grim diagnosis
Pat Buchanan on warning of Social Security, Medicare headed for cliff.
'Road' scholar
Before starting a long journey, it’s important to check a road map and make sure you know the best way to get where you’re going. A good map does more than highlight a path -- it warns of pitfalls ahead and helps you avoid them.
by Edwin J. Feulner
'Let them eat cake' economics distorts free market
The Democrats have been pounding on the Bush administration for months about its alleged "insensitivity" to the outsourcing of jobs. Kerry and Edwards have been screeching about the White House's "policy" to outsource jobs, close factories and - no doubt coming soon - to switch honest American Girl Scout cookies for stale Chinese fortune cookies made by children shackled to conveyer belts.
by Jonah Goldberg
Eating the Seed Corn
Higher tax rates don't grow an economy.
By William P. Kucewicz
Greenspan’s Black Magic
In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan painted a rosy picture of the U.S. economy. In his eyes, the Fed’s aggressive expansion of the money supply and suppression of interest rates have strengthened the financial condition of American households and industries.
by Rep. Ron Paul
Understanding the Great Depression and New Deal
The Great Depression remains the central economic event in American history. Even today, politicians invoke its memory.
by Bruce Bartlett
'Living wage' kills jobs
Give credit where credit is due. The political left is great with words. Conservatives have never been able to come up with such seductive phrases as the left mass produces.
by Thomas Sowell
Economic Woes Begin at Home
Many in Washington are concerned about the loss of jobs in our nation’s manufacturing sector, but few seem to understand the role Federal Reserve currency manipulation plays in that loss. The economic problems currently facing this country are the direct result of a boom-and-bust cycle caused by inflationary Fed policies. An open debate on monetary issues therefore is long overdue.
by Rep. Ron Paul
The Forgotten Payroll Tax
It's a huge tax that most Americans don't understand. And most of those who support leviathan government want to keep it that way. They're betting on the apathy and ignorance of the average American when this tax is discussed.
By Gregory Bresiger
Prolonging the Depression
The New Deal: Time for a new look.
BY ROBERT L. BARTLEY
The Discourteous Mr. Walker
Reluctantly, another one of our hired help recently told the truth about how the relentless taxing, inflating and spending of our central government is leading our nation down the road to serfdom.
By Gregory Bresiger
The Roots of the Federal Debt
The issue of government debt and deficits lay dormant throughout the high-revenue 1990s. But with recession and exploding government spending, the issue has become enormously important again. Sadly, just about everyone is missing the central point, which is not that we need budget reform so much as drastic monetary reform.
We need a job-saving law
Recent advocacy of free trade in this column has caused considerable reader apoplexy and anxiety, not to mention accusations of unconcern with worker plight. Readers have protested loss of good paying jobs to low-wage countries such as India, China and other Asian countries. I'd like to propose a way to completely eliminate this angst, and I'm wondering just how many of my fellow Americans would support it.
by Walter E. Williams
Paper-money tyranny
Rep. Ron Paul condemns fiat monetary system, central banks, Greenspan.
Private Roads and the Economics of the Environment
In the interest of battling automobile-created air pollution, environmentalists call for more public transportation — more buses and commuter trains and the higher taxes needed to fund them — to get people out of their cars.
by Scott McPherson
Central Planning of Electricity Must Fail
Central economic planning was discredited in the old Soviet Union and every other country that attempted it. What the great economist Ludwig von Mises showed in theory in the 1920s was then demonstrated in practice in subsequent decades: central economic planning is impossible.
by Sheldon Richman
Gasoline price controls would be a disaster
Unfortunately, Cruz Bustamante’s latest pronouncement does not indicate any knowledge of economics whatsoever. This suggests that California’s economic woes are unlikely to improve under his leadership.
by Bruce Bartlett
The Demographics of Saving and Growth
Aging populations tend to save more, which gives rise to complaints that this is bad for economic growth. But Chris Mayer explains that the level of "growth" should be determined by the market and the saving preferences of individuals. The real problem of aging demographics arises from the nature of a welfare state and the unrealistic pyramid scheme it represents.
The Anatomy of Deflation
Deflation is usually thought to be a synonym for falling prices. There could be no more serious error in all of economics, writes George Reisman. Calling falling prices "deflation" results in a profound confusion between prosperity and depression. This is because the leading cause of falling prices is economic progress.
Prosperity Requires Freedom
If economists are so smart, why is Africa so poor?
BY STEPHEN HABER, DOUGLASS C. NORTH AND BARRY R. WEINGAST
The sixth supply-side president
The liberal banshees on the presidential campaign trail may be technically right that so far the Bush tax cuts have not produced a vigorous recovery. But hopefully even the most partisan left-wing economists recognize that you simply can't judge the full effects of a broad-based tax-cut plan that's less than two months old.
by Larry Kudlow
Rise of the Russian Model
Reagan-like tax rates are revving up the ol’ Bear.
By Michael T. Darda
Out of Balance
A balanced-budget amendment will lead to higher taxes.
by Bruce Bartlett
Christianity's Free-Market Tradition
Those of us who know some economics are used to wincing when the typical clergyman makes a pronouncement on political economy. So it comes as a bit of a shock to read Late Medieval religious figures, avowedly concerned with justice and morality, and find that not only are they economically literate but that in many cases their economic theory was far more advanced than many professional economists who came after them.
by Stephen W. Carson
Faster Is Not Always Better
Why has the Concorde failed? The market determines whether and to what extent certain services such as speed are desired by society relative to competing demands on resources. No one can say a priori that faster is always and everywhere better. It may need to take a back seat to other priorities, like cheap tickets or mass availability or frequency of travel opportunities.
By N. Joseph Potts
The rich are already paying their fair share
On June 26, readers of The New York Times saw this headline at the top of page one: "Very Richest's Share of Income Grew Even Bigger, Data Show." One would have thought that important news was being broken. But in fact, the reporter, Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, writes virtually the same article annually.
by Bruce Bartlett
Recovery or Boomlet?
Any upturn whether in economic statistics or in the stock market is almost certain to follow the patterns not of economic recovery but rather a mini-boom. There is no way that this particular boom, as pathetic as it is, can be sustained for a long time, unlike the boom of the late 1990s. In fact, the Fed's recent actions can only force more malinvestments which themselves will have to be liquidated in the future.
by William L. Anderson
Taxing retirement funds
One of the hottest documents circulating around Washington today is a highly technical, statistics-laden, 131-page paper by Hoover Institution economist Michael Boskin. First reported by Jim McTague in Barron's on June 16, it estimates that the taxation of pension assets, including Individual Retirement Accounts and 401(k) plans, will yield a $12 trillion (in today's dollars) windfall to the federal government between now and 2040.
by Bruce Bartlett
A glimpse of reality
According to The Times of London, the city of Munich has replaced Microsoft Windows with a Linux operating system in 14,000 of its computers. This provided a glimpse of economic reality, completely contrary to the premise on which Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson convicted Microsoft of violating the anti-trust laws.
by Thomas Sowell
Taxing our way to prosperity
The Democrats' strange version of fiscal responsibility: The Democratic Party has lately been trying to portray itself as the party of fiscal responsibility. W. James Antle III surveys reality for his response.
A Reaganomic 'GPS'
Bush's stealth tax cuts are worthy of the Gipper.
BY DONALD T. REGAN
The Delusion of 'Profits'
A company that loses money is socially irresponsible.
BY PETER F. DRUCKER
Weakened dollar shakes stock market but not White House
Treasury Secretary John W. Snow set off another drop in the dollar and roiled the stock market yesterday by suggesting that the Bush administration was comfortable with a weaker dollar that would spur exports and growth.
By Patrice Hill
New York's Self-Destruction
By vetoing rent control, Pataki can help save the city.
BY ROBERT L. BARTLEY
Excluding some dividends and all economics
I recently worried that the Senate Finance Committee's efforts to slice up a low-calorie tax snack would turn into a stew with too many turnips and not enough beef. That is exactly what happened.
by Alan Reynolds
Shooting the economic wounded
America's series of corporate scandals have demonstrated the power of the market to discipline errant businesses. Market forces can also rehabilitate firms, unless Uncle Sam decides to shoot the economy's wounded.
by Doug Bandow
Apple Without Appeal
High taxes are only one reason to hate New York.
BY BRENDAN MINITER
Economic stupidity
Imagine that you and I are in a rowboat. I commit the stupid act of shooting a hole in my end of the boat. Would it be intelligent for you to respond by shooting a hole in your end of the boat?
by Walter Williams
Herbert Hoover's daughter Hillary
Hillary must not remember Jimmy Carter's wonderful economic tenure during the late 1970s. She must also have forgotten that Franklin D. Roosevelt's presidency watched the Great Depression remain Great for eight years.
by Ben Shapiro
Tax system punishes success
Jon Dougherty warns excesses imperil U.S., cites historical precedent.
Why No Recovery?
No one can argue about the current moribund economy, complete with flat or falling stock prices, nonexistent profits, layoffs, airline bankruptcies, and exploding federal and state budget deficits. But few people have accurately pointed out why there is no recovery from the original recession.
by William Anderson
What Every American Wants
I never met a tax cut I didn't like, and I like President Bush's a lot.
BY MILTON FRIEDMAN
A Retrospective on Johnson's Poverty War
Washington loves the analogy—-and reality—-of war. Adam Young considers one of the most famous uses of that term, the War on Poverty. It was in reality, a State-sponsored war on the opportunities of the poor and on all Americans.
Supply-Siders At Odds Over Best Tax Cut Strategy
Supply-side economists are sending conflicting messages to the Bush administration and Congress about the types of tax cuts that would help the still-sluggish economy.
By Christine Hall
Five easy pieces of tax reform
I wasn’t going to write about taxes for a second week in a row, but then I read Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s interview with the Financial Times, which troubled me . . .
by Jack Kemp
Down and Dirty at the EPA
Bush makes it cheaper to run clean factories. So why are the greens so mad?
BY THOMAS J. BRAY
Income tax to end within few years?
Group sees realistic chance to replace it with consumption levy.
By Jon Dougherty
Permanent, Marginal, Immediate
There's three things to remember about stimulative tax cuts.
BY ROBERT L. BARTLEY
Keynes and the Pyramids
Keynes loved the pyramids, Paul Cantor reminds us. Cantor futher suspects that the rehabilitation of the reputation of the pyramid project is part of a larger cultural effort to prop up the respectability of government in general and the nation-state in particular.
by Paul Cantor
Accountability for whom?
The stock market keeps falling. It wasn't supposed to be that way: Congress supposedly fixed the economy when it made corporate executives certify under oath their companies' financial statements.
by Doug Bandow
The Hubris in Monetary Policy Award
In the midst of a recession, and with the credibility of central banking itself being called into question, what is a central banker to do? Why, blame executive pay, of course, and impugn the morality of anyone who might believe that Fed governors are a greater threat to economic stability than shareholders that make wage decisions.
by Christopher Westley
Repeal the Corporate Tax
Why not repeal the corporate income tax? Everyone’s worried about falling stock values, so let’s remove one of the big burdens on corporate profits: the corporate income tax.
by Sheldon Richman
Bill to eliminate the Fed introduced
Rep. Paul: Legislation seeks to 'restore financial stability' to U.S.
By Jon Dougherty
Does Government Run the Economy?
President Bush received some criticism last week after holding an economic forum in Waco. The forum was intended to bring business and civic leaders together with the President to discuss America’s economic problems, but the press dismissed the whole affair as nothing more than a photo-op for the President with a hand-picked friendly audience. The message from the pundits was clear: the President is all talk, but we need action by the government to restore prosperity.
by Rep. Ron Paul
A Tale of Two Tax Codes
The tax system of the United States is broken, busted, an oppressive pile of codes and laws that have created a situation in which someday there will be few, if any, geese left to lay the golden eggs. . .
by Diane Alden

	Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation by Joseph J. Ellis An illuminating study of the intertwined lives of the founders of the American republic--John Adams, Aaron Burr, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington. During the 1790s, which Ellis calls the most decisive decade in our nation's history, the greatest statesmen of their generation--and perhaps any--came together to define the new republic and direct its course for the coming centuries.
	Scandalmonger : A Novel Scandalmonger is the 25th book from William Safire, the prolific, feisty New York Times columnist and word wrangler. It's a historic novel set in 1790s New England, when the Founding Fathers were enduring various crises and humiliations as they scurried to become part of the history books. Always a stickler for the truth--as long as it's uttered in the finest of phrases--the author lets us know right from the start that we're "entitled to know what is history and what is twistery." Based on documents and diaries, and complete with an exhaustive section of footnotes separating fact from fiction, Scandalmonger turns out to be a bona fide page-turner. Safire knows what he's doing; he knows he has a lesson to teach. It's a lesson about how early America wasn't much different from Clinton's America--the temptations of mistresses, the power struggles, the ridiculous debates about purity between corrupt men being just as present. If he has one message, it is this: within every powerful politician, there is a dirty-minded second grader trying to get out. Witness this scene between two outraged congressmen who seem intent on "turning the House into a 'gladiators' arena'"
	Setting the World Ablaze : Washington, Adams, Jefferson and the American Revolution Setting the World Ablaze is the story of the three men who, perhaps more than any others, helped bring the United States into being: George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Weaving their three life stories into one narrative, John E. Ferling delivers a genuine and intimate illustration of them and, in doing so, gives us a new understanding of the passion and uncertainty of the struggle to form a new nation.
	Becoming America : The Revolution Before 1776 Publishers Weekly "Butler's original analysis is important reading on 18th-century America . . ." Kirkus Review "A sweeping, well-researched analysis of the transformative changes wrought by immigration, war, and cultural change in colonial America."
	Basic Economics: A Citizen's Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell From one of America's best-known economists, the one book anyone who wants to understand the economy needs to read. At last there is a citizen's guide to the economy, written by an economist who uses plain English. No jargon, no graphs, no equations. Yet this is a comprehensive survey, covering everything from rent control and the rise and fall of businesses to the international balance of payments. The purpose of Basic Economics is to enable people without any economic training to understand the way the economy functions-not only the American economy, but other economies around the world.