economic

There is hesitation among the political class as to what must be done to pay down and eliminate this debt. At around $22.5 trillion, the United States national debt sits at 106 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). There is no disputing that this gigantic debt will someday become due and payable. However, there is …

Question: I am a proponent of trade liberalization and a free market, but I keep coming back to the issue of the severe inequality that free international trade can create. How would an Objectivist view the marginalization of the poor in developing nations, where they have absolutely no way to rise above poverty and hunger without …

A recent Bloomberg article discussed the opposing arguments in the debate over COVID-19 lockdowns. The article described the epidemiological way of thinking versus the economic way of thinking. In the simplest terms, epidemiologists think in terms of reducing the spread of disease, while economists think in terms of balancing trade-offs. While expert epidemiologists are much …

Human beings react to every rule, regulation, and order governments impose, and their reactions result in outcomes that can be quite different than the outcomes lawmakers intended. Every human decision brings with it unintended consequences. Often, they are inconsequential, even funny. When Airbus, for example, wanted to make its planes quieter to improve the flying …

The definitive guide to the key events and policies that caused the Great Depression. Few areas of historical research have provoked such intensive study as the causes of America’s Great Depression—and for good reason. Tens of millions of humans suffered intense misery and despair. How bad was the Great Depression? The dimensions of the economic …

Years of deficit spending has made monetary policy a slave to fiscal policy. The federal government is moving into the final stages of its fiscal life. Deficits have gotten so enormous that the Federal Reserve simply prints the money the government needs. Why? Because that’s the only option left on the table. For years, we …

Yet again, government intervention hurts those it is intended to help. ne of the more elementary observations about economics is that a nation’s prosperity is determined in part by the quantity and quality of labor and capital. These “factors of production” are combined to generate national income. I frequently grouse that punitive tax policies discourage capital. There’s less …

“So you think money is the root of all evil?” That is the question the wealthy, dashing copper magnate Francisco d’Anconia asked at the beginning of his famous “money speech” in Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. D’Anconia was addressing a roomful of people who seemed confused about the meaning of money. Sixty-two years later, …

The U.S. Department of Commerce on Friday placed additional sanctions on Chinese tech giant Huawei to limit the company’s ability to acquire semiconductor chips that are made using American technology. The Commerce Department said the sanctions will “narrowly and strategically” target a loophole used by some companies to evade previous sanctions by producing semiconductor chips …

An Australian MP said China’s ban on Australian beef exports is punishment for the Australian prime minister’s proposed international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus. “It’s a bastard act,’’ Liberal-Nationals MP George Christensen said. “It’s just wrong. China has just gone into full, bullying, threatening, coercion mode. That’s what I think.” Australia is set …