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.
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 More »
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.
The Work of Human Hands Read More »
Plenty of scoundrels will be convicted in the coming months for stealing COVID money. But it was the politicians of both parties who unleashed the reckless spending that left us with a soaring national debt, roaring inflation, and a fading mirage of prosperity.
Covid Fraud: A Staggering $600 Billion Read More »
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.
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 More »
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 More »
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 More »
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 More »
The fact is, Tuesday’s CPI report destroyed the idea that the Fed will pause soon. In fact, excluding volatile food and energy prices, the so-called core CPI rose 0.6%, which if sustained would be an annual rate above 7%.
Inflation: Where Are We Now? Read More »
The mechanism that seduced many academics that have no sympathy with intellectual postmodernism is this one: it is suggested that by pursuing one’s normal, everyday course of life, one endangers the well-being of others.
Fiat Money and the Covid Regime: Actually Existing Postmodernism Read More »
There is a moment in the day when the work is done and perhaps a cocktail comes out or the dishes are washed and the kids are in bed and the room falls silent. At this moment, millions and billions of people the world over know it. Disaster is all around us. We are just pretending otherwise, simply because this is what we have to do.
What can you do as an individual against a multi-million dollar institution full of important people with doctorates? What if you get cancelled? What if you lose everything you have worked for? These are important considerations. But remember this, 21st-century universities are commercial enterprises and you are their customers. They don’t exist without you.
Coercion on Campus Stops When Students Say No Read More »
