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The Secret Message of Stimulus Spending

Even the feds don't believe they can create jobs
November 3, 2009

Veronique de Rugy

Stimulus funds are being allocated without thought to the level of unemployment within states. If government spending could in fact create jobs, then the problem of unemployment could be mitigated by distributing funds to states based on their relative unemployment levels.  

A Hard Pill to Swallow

Is the stimulus turning the economy around?
October 29, 2009

Jacob Sullum

No doubt spending billions of dollars in borrowed money has some impact on the economy. But the idea that the stimulus package had much to do with an incipient recovery that may have begun in June is belied by a couple of inconvenient facts.

Self-Governance Works

Elinor Ostrom's research shows that free people can overcome the "tragedy of the commons"
October 29, 2009

John Stossel

We who have confidence in what free people can achieve have long believed that government should not venture beyond its narrow sphere of providing physical security. It should not attempt to cure every social ill. So it's good to learn that serious scholars have demonstrated that our intuitions are right. Free people, given the chance, solve what many "experts" think are problems that require state intervention. For that reason, Elinor Ostrom's winning of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences ought to kindle a new interest in freedom.

Anti-Privatization Pacheco Law Continues to Hamstring Massachusetts Budget

October 28, 2009, 11:35pm

Adam Summers

Ideally, the Pacheco Law should be repealed. Short of repeal, it should be amended such that privatization can become a useful policy tool for legislators and agency managers.

'The Last Gasp of the Dinosaurs'

Publisher and flat-tax Republican Steve Forbes on 1930s-style economic policies, the news industry, and the future of the GOP
October 28, 2009

Matt Welch

In July, Editor in Chief Matt Welch interviewed Steve Forbes at the annual FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas.

Fed Up

The political movement to curtail the Federal Reserve goes from fringe to mainstream
October 27, 2009

Brian Doherty

The Fed’s independence is threatened by a growing understanding that the Austrian interpretation of central banking’s risks might be correct: Keeping interest rates too low for too long can precipitate severe economic busts. “It’s hard to imagine the little spark that can make big change,” says Austrian business cycle theorist Steve Horwitz, “but it can happen if the drumbeat stays going. The Fed was created by Congress, so we won’t get major change until members of Congress perceive their constituents or people with political, cultural, and social power saying there’s something really seriously wrong here.”

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