FEE

I think financial privacy is a good thing since predatory governments are less likely to misbehave if they know taxpayers have safe (and confidential) places to put their money. Now that privacy has been weakened, however, anti-tax competition folks at the OECD are openly chortling that there...

National security is easier to finance with a strong economy. Yet protectionism reduces economic vitality. All the more reason why Section 232-instigated trade barriers are so senseless and illogical. And all the more reason why I wish Trump was serious when he proposed zero trade barriers with...

The policy question here, however, is whether some of us should be allowed to use the power of government against others in order to keep changes from happening that we don’t like. Is it right to use political power, the power to initiate violence, against other people who haven’t used violence...

Things are looking pretty bleak right now for U.S. trade policy. Congress could and should step in here, but that does not look likely at the moment. Retaliation by U.S. trading partners might get the administration’s intention, but as noted, the administration may see all the additional tariffs...

Bernie Sanders and members of the Democratic Socialists of America choose to “step around the Everest of bodies ... without a tear, a scruple, a regret, an act of contrition, or a reevaluation of self, soul, and mind.” By giving socialism and communism intellectual cover and acceptability,...

The fundamental problem is that Trump genuinely seems to believe that a “trade deficit” is evidence that a nation is somehow losing or being mistreated. In reality, a trade deficit is simply the flip side of a capital surplus. And that’s generally evidence of a nation’s economic strength.

If the Canadian tech scene continues to thrive, fuelled by new workers from abroad, it could be genuinely transformative for the economy. No wonder, then, that Canada’s government is so open to immigration. Perhaps some other countries should take note.

"The reduction of labor taxes paid by firms reduces the gross wage bill of firms and hence increases the value of having a worker. Workers are able to obtain part of the increase in firms’ surplus in the bargaining process, which results in a real wage increase. Nevertheless, the wage increase...

It is amusing that it is English people making this mistake. Our own class and social system puts the plumber a number of steps down the pecking order from the schoolteacher, despite the first earning perhaps three times the second. We’ve centuries of disdain for those...

Given the lack of competition in many markets, the skepticism of pro-net neutrality activists towards the anti-competitive motives of the ISPs is not unwarranted.

However, the same skepticism should be directed towards the major corporate sponsors of the pro-net neutrality push. As much...

Last year, Intel generated $4 in foreign sales for every dollar in domestic sales, and Mondelez, Apple, Exxon, and Coca-Cola generated close to $2 or more in foreign sales for every dollar of sales in the US. It, therefore, makes perfect economic sense for those US-based multi-national...

An Internet Sales Tax would force you to calculate, collect, and pay sales taxes for every buyer’s home state, not just where your business is. That’s right. In addition to everything else, you’d have to figure out the sales taxes for every sales tax jurisdiction that you sell in—that involves...

What these individuals have in common is that, in the pursuit of truth and free expression, they offended arbiters of politically correct opinion. These thinkers are the new heretics who challenge the religious convictions of society and they are excommunicated in the same way that those who...

First, remember that no insurance company pays the list price, ever. Second, the higher the list prices for medical care, the more people feel compelled to obtain the insurance to protect them from the painfully hyper-inflated prices. And third, the high prices of medical care prompt politicians...

It's a well-established fact that Social Security and Medicare are in serious trouble and have been for a while. The newest projections released last week have Social Security being insolvent in the year 2034 and Medicare in 2026. A fair amount of this trouble can be laid at the feet of the...

"This forced us to think broader about carryout and meant that we had to consider the drive or walk home, on the pothole-ridden roads and icy sidewalks that we don’t own and can’t control ourselves. So, we decided to go where no other pizza company would go."

And where they’re going, they...

If we forswear military intervention in other countries’ affairs, there will be times, to be sure, when we see bad things happening around the world that our government could have had the power to change. That is, to paraphrase the 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat, what’s seen....

With capitalism, the working people really do hold ultimate sway over the means of production. They just don’t do it in their role as workers but in their role as consumers. They exert their sway in checkout aisles and website shopping carts, and not in the halls of labor unions or revolutionary...

Is this the only way people can and should live? By means of power, plunder, privilege, and political position? Is group conflict the only way the social and economic system can be arranged to serve humanity?

The answer is, no! There is a better way. But it requires thinking about man,...

The good news is that Donald Trump is not imitating all of Herbert Hoover’s statist policies.

The bad news, as I explain in this interview, is that his protectionist mistakes could trigger a repeat of Hoover’s beggar-thy-neighbor protectionism that wreaked havoc in the global economy...

Irwin Schiff wrote a great comic book about how an economy works—with fish—and Dan Sanchez breaks it down.

"If every time someone saves more, he is pressured to relinquish his “excess wealth,” that can only discourage savings. And knocking out savings knocks people off the Cycle of Growth...

Instead of nickel-and-diming taxpayers and creating onerous restrictions, the state should focus on getting its finances in order and prioritizing basic infrastructure needs over fruitless left-wing welfare schemes.

“Won’t we eventually outstrip the planet’s ability to sustain us?” No. No, we won’t, as long as we keep our ethical wits about us and continue the world’s uneven-but-upward march in the direction of economic freedom.

We are wasting massive amounts of what economists call human capital—the mental abilities and skills people use to produce goods and services—because of the global disease environment. Rather than focusing our attention on going over there in order to “fix” their infrastructure and do for them...