It’s been some 40 years since the United States has experienced significant inflation. However, the phenomenon of an accelerated rise in the general price level is rearing its ugly head.
Conditions today are ripe for another stagflation episode.
Horwitz reckoned the greatest misconception about economics is that it deals only with material living standards.
The problem is not so much a lack of available jobs.
Since World War II, the Japanese have made corporate employment a mutual life-long commitment—shareholder interests be damned.
But as we understand, vaccine complications, sometimes leading to deaths, are a risk for all vaccinations.
Government officials certainly don’t know the countless and ever-changing details of the market. Nor are they likely to intervene in ways that make markets more efficient. Antitrust
Sears got started doing exactly what Amazon is doing now: offering low prices and home delivery. But the larger point is this: In free markets, firms have to serve customers better than their rivals.
What to B&C may be profligate spending on widely-distributed local projects is more appropriately seen as an exercise in distributing the benefits broadly, if imperfectly, among future taxpayers.
A bit of background: Afghanistan is a tribal society dominated by tribal leaders and subject to tribal conflicts. This makes establishing an effective national government difficult.
Now would be a particularly good time to get rid of Trump’s tariffs, as the economy is experiencing widespread shortages and rising inflation.
To the extent Hamas spends some of its resources on providing humanitarian aid, an expansion of the United States’ humanitarian aid enables Hamas to divert some of its resources to expand militarization.
The economy is not a machine that can be turned on or off. It is not as if President Trump, nor even Dr. Anthony Fauci, can declare, “OK, on May 17, it’s all over—everyone go back to work.” Rather, an economy is networks of relationships.
It is a safe bet that the pandemic will produce a decline in gross domestic product and unemployment rates at a level not seen since the Great Depression.
The hullabaloo will probably kill off the Iowa caucus. Yet there is much to like about a caucus system—especially if one sees democracy as something more than a frantic media-driven circus.
A common misperception is to characterize a free market as one where businesses are “unbridled” and can do “whatever they please” in pursuit of profits.
Cheap debt encourages fiscal irresponsibility—among teenage boys and politicians.
Since at least the time of John Maynard Keynes, if not earlier, economic pundits have been looking for a “golden” economic signal that predicts economic downturns.
The president just awarded 78-year-old economist Arthur Laffer the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Some call the namesake of the so-called Laffer curve a kook and a fake; others see him as a hero.
While we honor the remaining nonagenarians who bravely fought at the beaches of Normandy, let’s not forget that the odious philosophy they fought against, National Socialism, still has traction in some circles.
