Economics

Economics articles featuring analysis of the global censorship industrial complex, impacts on public health, free trade, liberty, and policy.

All Brownstone Institute economics articles are translated into multiple languages.

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Et Tu, PayPal? The EU’s Role in Defunding Dissent

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Could the EU’s Code of Practice on Disinformation and its Digital Services Act (DSA) have something to do with PayPal’s skittish forays into “combatting disinformation?” Well, yes, they could, and you may rest assured that EU officials or representatives have already had a word with PayPal about them. 

Et Tu, PayPal? The EU’s Role in Defunding Dissent Read Journal Article

Ben Bernanke Was the Crisis

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Left alone, recessions are the cure. The problem was that the political class tried to medicate what was healthy.  Bernanke fell hard for the medication part. Fast forward to 2008, a falling dollar under the impressively inept President George W. Bush had instigated what Ludwig von Mises referred to in Human Action as a “flight to the real.” Yes, presidents get the dollar they want, Bush wanted a weak one, and a falling dollar drove massive consumption of housing over investment in new ideas.  

Ben Bernanke Was the Crisis Read Journal Article

Inflation and Recession are Becoming Entrenched

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A bad stagflation is here. Since the Fed will be locked in a battle to tame the price side of the equation even as real output falters for months and years to come, we seriously doubt that the economic contraction to be recorded on Joe Biden’s watch will be described in the history books as a “very slight recession.”

Inflation and Recession are Becoming Entrenched Read Journal Article

Private Sector Vaccine Mandates are Contrary to Free Enterprise

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Maintaining a safe workplace is a legitimate business interest, but trying to attain it via COVID-19 vaccinations is not something a reasonable person would expect given the realistic concerns, and lack of broad acceptance about, the vaccine’s safety and efficacy. 

Private Sector Vaccine Mandates are Contrary to Free Enterprise Read Journal Article

The Work of Human Hands

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While people stayed in houses, sewage plants and wastewater treatment facilities continued to operate. People had to work at power plants to supply electricity to homes. Hands had built cellphone towers and satellites to enable phone and Internet reception. More hands maintained the towers and satellites. Before 2020, we may not have remembered or seen these real people with real hands doing real work in the physical world. Their lives mattered then and they matter now – even while many others stayed home or are still staying home. 

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What is Populism?

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Political discourse abounds with waywardness in word usage. It’s something you do not want to fall into. Falling into it has two sides, passive and active. The passive vice is going along with the wayward word usage in the discourse you read or listen to. The active vice is discoursing waywardly yourself. Try to be neither sap nor perp of word waywardness. 

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A Nobel Prize for Moral Hazard

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This is what the “experts” have done to the world, a crisis that began in the laboratories of intellectuals who believe they know a better way than freedom to manage the world. Now the rest of us are forced to watch as they all give awards to each other for a job well done, thus adding another layer of moral hazard: there are literally no professional consequences for being terribly wrong.

A Nobel Prize for Moral Hazard Read Journal Article

How the Fed Funded and Prolonged the Lockdowns

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The Federal Reserve flagrantly violated its mandate to maintain price stability when it kept interest rates near zero for a full year after inflation soared above its target. It’s disingenuous for the Fed governors to now act like inflation hawks, pushing the entire economy into recession, after they let inflation run unchecked well above their target for a full year.

How the Fed Funded and Prolonged the Lockdowns Read Journal Article

The Economists Self-Censored and Inflation Is a Result

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Since the Spring of 2020, economists have had a strong incentive to censor themselves about the costs of covid measures for fear of being seen as out of step with the hastily achieved consensus that covid measures came without any significant costs to the public. Economists dismissed any dissent from the lockdown consensus. On Twitter and elsewhere, those few who dared dissent were labelled cranks or grandma killers. 

The Economists Self-Censored and Inflation Is a Result Read Journal Article

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The Market Still Loves You

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The theme is meaning. Not big meaning but meaning in small things. The meaning of everyday life. Finding friendship, mission, passion, and love in the course of working out one’s life in the framework of a commercial society, which should not be narrowly construed as only a way of paying bills but rather should be seen as the instantiation of a life well lived. We were not doing a good job of that, so my thinking was to inspire people to come to love what we take for granted.

The Market Still Loves You Read Journal Article