It should come as little surprise that something as simple as identifying the start of a recession would generate controversy. Everything has become politicized. One could point out that the current economic contraction is still quite mild. Or that pandemic mitigation policies of the previous administration were as much (if not more) of a factor […]Read More
AIER’s Everyday Price sank 0.6 percent in July after a 2.4 percent jump in June. The July EPI broke a string of 19 consecutive increases dating back to December 2020. From a year ago, the Everyday Price Index is up 13.0 percent, less than the 14.6 percent 12-month gain through June. Motor fuel prices, which […]Read More
The economic illiterati are an unfortunately durable breed. There is little question that the U.S. has already entered a recession. The spectacle of the administration’s redefining what constitutes a recession, and the enthusiasm with which economically clueless media cheerleaders and so-called “independent fact checkers” parrot the party line is laughable. Kafka could have made a […]Read More
Reprinted from RealClearMarkets The actual state where this took place escapes at this time, but it’s really not the point. What’s the point is that sometime in the not-too-distant past a study came out revealing that kids in households with books in them ultimately did better in school, earned more as adults, and all sorts […]Read More
Occupational licensure is a species of political favoritism, invariably enacted to protect incumbent practitioners by restricting competition. People can usually see that when it comes to everyday service work such as hair styling or pool cleaning. The “we have to protect the consumer” rationale is plainly bogus in such instances. But what about the legal […]Read More
Someone should tell Washington’s elite that Gulliver’s Travels is a satire, not a handbook. Yes, in Part III of Jonathan Swift’s tale, Laputa sounds a lot like Washington, D.C. It also sounds a lot like the Spanish word for “whore,” about which the late P. J. O’Rourke is surely laughing from Heaven. The island of […]Read More
Reprinted from the Foundation for Economic Education If you’ve been anywhere near an airport in the last two years, you’ve probably gathered that things in the airline industry have changed. Delays and cancelations are causing more headaches than ever, baggage mishandling is up, unruly passenger cases are up…it’s really a mess. Unsurprisingly, flight complaints remain significantly higher than pre-pandemic levels. The […]Read More
Recently during a stop at a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike I marveled at the variety of people there, all of whom were complete strangers to me. I saw people much younger than me and a few much older. Many were clothed and coiffed – or tattooed and body-pierced – in manners that […]Read More
Reprinted from Law & Liberty The state is back. On the left and right, significant numbers of thinkers and voters in Western democracies are looking to government to solve our problems, real and imagined. Whether it is climate change, economic challenges, or sudden surges of migrants across sovereign borders, the demand for state action is […]Read More
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