Senate Majority leader Harry Reid thinks that the U.S. Olympic Team’s uniforms—made in China as they were—deserve to be burned. He reasons that we have an abundance of unemployed textile workers in this country—why shouldn’t we take advantage of them to manufacture the Olympics uniforms? Wouldn’t that put these Americans back to work?
There are…
As the title indicates, this post is the follow up to a previous post. I recommend reading it before jumping into this one.
Enter Stan Marsh, just trying to return his family’s margarita maker. If there is any redemptive part of “Margaritaville” it is here.
First Stan attempts to return it to the retailer. The…
In a previous post, I lauded the economic lessons of South Park’s “Cash for Gold” episode. In this post, I must reverse my praise for the economics in an earlier episode, “Margaritaville.” The episode originally aired in early 2009 amid intense public debates over the global financial crisis.
The episode took on the cornucopia of …
The popular humor website “Cracked.com” recently published a thought provoking article entitled “5 Popular Forms of Charity (That Aren’t Helping).” The five charitable activities mentioned were (1) awareness campaigns, (2) donating clothing, (3) choosing your charity based on its overhead, (4) earmarking donations, (5) volunteering after disasters. The author’s arguments for why each of these…
Economist Larry White at George Mason University submitted a thought-provoking written testimony the other day. Discussing the issue of fractional reserve banking before the House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology, he made the following claim:
For payment by account transfer, FRB offers a more economic way of providing payment services. A money warehouse…
The title should be no surprise by now. Paul Krugman–arch-Keynesian–is once again misrepresenting what Austrian economics is. Krugman thinks the recent financial crisis can test (and prove) the superiority of Keynes prescriptions for an ailing economy.
Before we delve into the specifics, consider the alternatives Krugman proposes: classical economics (he considers Austrian among them) and…
The television in my household is often tuned into Fox News (almost never by my choosing). Through the various programs (especially The Five), I overhear constant complaints about President Obama’s handling of the economy. More often than not, I find the talking heads to be demonstrating flawed, inconsistent thinking in their complaints that are not…
“My true adversary in this battle,” he said “has no name, no face, no party… it is the world of finance.”
Thus spoke new French President Francois Hollande while campaigning last month. Despite the seeming backwardness of such sentiments, it is no secret that many people actually do feel a degree of animosity toward the…
With the introduction of Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom, you now have the opportunity to learn the history and economics that you never learned in school.
Since the “intellectual battle for the free society is on,” Liberty Classroom‘s “goal is to equip as many ambassadors for liberty as possible with the knowledge that they need to…
After my post on The Truth About Austerity and hearing some great feedback from Peter in the comments, I deemed it necessary to dedicate a post to explaining the basics of public finance. We at Hans try to make basic economics accessible to all readers, so I will aim to keep it simple and limit…
