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Taxing the Rich: It’s Complicated

After months of debate, and substantial changes along the way, this summer Congress successfully enacted a landmark package of tax and spending cuts, a key component of Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. Trump’s “big beautiful bill” (HR 1) will reduce taxes by around $4.5 trillion while also cutting roughly $1.5 trillion in federal spending. It is .. MORE

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F.A Hayek: Education Is an Obligation, Not a Right

Friedrich A. Hayek Is there a right to education? Even in today’s polarized political environment in the United States, the overwhelming majority of citizens think there is such a right, and many hold that it applies through the completion of college.1 Every one of the fifty state constitutions includes language providing for free public education, .. MORE

Book Review, Kling's Corner

Medical Practice Without Consent

While informed consent and respect for autonomy govern how health care practitioners interact with their patients, this new ethos is absent when it comes to the government asserting authority over adults’ health decisions. The government dictates what kinds of health professionals adults may consult. It determines what medicines adults may purchase and under which circumstances .. MORE

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Incentives

Interesting Facts About the Cocoa Market

By Pierre Lemieux

International Trade

Jagdish Bhagwati on Protectionism

By David Henderson

Economic and Political Philosophy

Constitutional Tradeoffs

By Jon Murphy

Supply-side Economics

Laffer Curve in the United Kingdom?

By Scott Sumner

Tax Reform

Who Got the Biggest Percentage Tax Cuts?

By David Henderson

Economic Methods

Accounting Identities and Economic Theories

By Jon Murphy

Economic and Political Philosophy

Sorts of Deals

By Pierre Lemieux

EconTalk

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econtalk-extra

Reading a Love Letter to Justice

Was it divine intervention or simply the fact of being right that makes the infamous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” timeless, profound and even life-changing for some readers? If you haven’t met Dwayne Betts in an earlier EconTalk episode, get ready for Russ Roberts’s phenomenal friend and guest. Betts is so present in the moment and .. MORE

econtalk-podcast

Let Me Be Forgotten (with Lowry Pressly)

What do we lose when every moment is recorded, every action scrutinized, and every past mistake preserved? Philosopher and author Lowry Pressly joins EconTalk’s Russ Roberts to discuss why privacy isn’t just about secrets or information control, the necessity of spontaneity, the importance of moral growth, and what we need to become fully human. From .. MORE

EconLog

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#ReadWithMe

We Have Never Been Woke Part 4: Why Are Symbolic Capitalists Woke?

This is the fourth part of my exploration of Musa al-Gharbi’s We Have Never Been Woke. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). As we’ve seen, al-Gharbi spends a good deal of time establishing the demographic of people who are most likely to end up being “woke” as he described the term. And that group is overwhelmingly skewed .. MORE

Economic and Political Philosophy

Equality Before the Law, Equality of Permission, and the Language of Libertarianism

When we communicate with one another, how we say things can sometimes be as important as what we actually say. Words matter, which is even more true when we exchange ideas and try to convince others to embrace our viewpoints. Ideological rhetoric, then, merits some thought on the part of libertarians. Of course, libertarians uphold .. MORE

LIBERTY CLASSICS SERIES

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The Foundations of Modern Austrian Economics

By Edwin G. Dolan

In June 1974 the Institute for Humane Studies sponsored the first of a series of conferences on Austrian economics. This conference was held at Royalton College in South Royalton, Vermont, and attracted some fifty participants from all regions of the United States and three continents abroad. The conferees came to hear Israel M. Kirzner, Ludwig .. MORE

Tyranny Unmasked

By John Taylor

Most political writers have concluded, that a republican government, over a very large territory, cannot exist; and as this opinion is sustained by alarming proofs, and weighty authorities, it is entitled to much respect, and serious consideration. All extensive territories in past times, and all in the present age, except those of the United States, .. MORE

Book Reviews and Suggested Readings

It’s Still Summer…

By Amy Willis

If you are anything like us, you are busy trying to maximize these last glorious days of summer. And you are probably also desperately trying to find the time to finish the pile of summer reading you planned for yourself at the beginning of summer. We are not here to help. As summer winds to .. MORE

Social Justice as a Tribal Remainder

By Pierre Lemieux

A Book Review of The Mirage of Social Justice, by Friedrich Hayek. Volume II of his Law, Legislation, and Liberty1 Published in 1976, The Mirage of Social Justice was the second volume of Friedrich Hayek’s trilogy Law, Legislation, and Liberty. My review of the first volume, Rules and Order, appeared on Econlib2 following the publication .. MORE

Conversations

VIDEO

Capitalism, Government, and the Good Society

On April 10, 2013, Liberty Fund and Butler University sponsored a symposium, “Capitalism, Government, and the Good Society.” The evening began with solo presentations by the three participants–Michael Munger of Duke University, Robert Skidelsky of the University of Warwick, and Richard Epstein of New York University. (Travel complications forced the fourth invited participant, James Galbraith .. MORE

VIDEO

A Conversation with Ronald H. Coase

Nobel laureate Ronald H. Coase (1910-2013) was recorded in 2001 in an extended video now available to the public. Coase’s articles, “The Problem of Social Cost” and “The Nature of the Firm” are among the most important and most often cited works in the whole of economic literature. Coase recounts how he tried to encourage .. MORE

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Supplementary materials for popular college textbooks used in courses in the Principles of Economics, Microeconomics, Price Theory, and Macroeconomics are suggested by topic.

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From the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Economic Regulation, Government Policy, The Economics of Special Markets

Greenhouse Effect

What Is It? The “greenhouse effect” is a complicated process by which the earth is becoming progressively warmer. The earth is bathed in sunlight, some of it reflected back into space and some absorbed. If the absorption is not matched by radiation back into space, the earth will get warmer until the intensity of that .. MORE

Government Policy, Labor

Unemployment Insurance

[Editor’s note: some of the data have changed since this article was written in 1992. The overall structure of the unemployment insurance, however, has remained intact.]   The United States unemployment insurance program is intended to offset income lost by workers who lose their jobs as a result of employer cutbacks. The program, launched by .. MORE

Economic Regulation, The Marketplace

Brand Names

Consumers pay a higher price for brand-name products than for products that do not carry an established brand name. Because this involves paying extra for what some consider an identical product that merely has been advertised and promoted, brand names may appear to be economically wasteful. This argument was behind the decision to eliminate all .. MORE

Quotes

The competitive process depends entirely on the freedom of those with better ideas or with greater willingness to serve the market better opportunities. Every arbitrary impediment to entry is a restriction on the competitiveness of the market process.

-Israel Kirzner

The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship.    

-Ludwig von Mises Full Quote >>

To a real wise man the judicious and well-weighted approbation of a single wise man, gives more heartfelt satisfaction than all the noisy applauses of ten thousand ignorant though enthusiastic admirers.

-Adam Smith Full Quote >>