Bob Murphy

Author Archive

God, the State, and Sin

One of the frequent objections I get runs like this: “Murphy, how can you be so blind? You are great at seeing how the State rules people through fear and dependence, preying on their insecurities and vanities. Don’t you see that’s exactly what organized religion has done throughout the ages? No gods no rulers!” Of […]

Tom Woods and I Discuss Krugman’s Flawless Model

Everything you need is here.

“Paid Family Leave” a Great Way to Hurt Women in the Workforce

My latest at FEE. An excerpt: For example, if a 23-year-old woman with a fresh MBA is applying to several firms for a career in the financial sector, but she has a serious boyfriend and thinks they might one day start a family, then — other things equal — she is going to highly value […]

Update on Commenting Issues

OK I am going to try to go into the Spam folder periodically and approve comments that the plug-in erroneously marked as Spam. Apparently, this will help it learn over time which ones to allow and which to divert. So that means some of you will see duplicate comments, because you resubmitted under a different […]

Potpourri

==> Martin Weitzman is one of the leading economic theorists in the case FOR aggressive government action against greenhouse gas emissions. Here he is on EconTalk. ==> An interesting graphic from John Christy’s testimony showing 102 climate models’ predictions vs. observations on global temperatures. ==> Daniel Kuehn bringing power to the people. ==> Ryan Murphy (basically) […]

An Unexpected Twist in the “Debt Burdening Our Grandkids?” Debate

You guys think you’ve got me all figured out. Well you’re wrong. In my current EconLib essay, instead of focusing on Krugman, I design two thought experiments of war financing to show that even Ludwig von Mises missed something crucial in the “debt and future generations” argument. The intro: Critics of government debt often argue that […]

Tomorrowland vs. the Bible

Because there is such a dearth of family-friendly movies, I took my son to see the George Clooney movie, “Tomorrowland.” On the one hand, the film was very uplifting. I’m sure the people behind thought they were doing a great thing. They were telling people (especially young kids) that so long as enough poets, artists, […]

My Response to David R. Henderson’s Proposed Bet on the Stock Market

Over at EconLog, in response to my recent post here, David writes (with my minor formatting changes): I propose to Bob the following bet: ==> “I bet that by May 27, 2020, the S&P 500, adjusted for inflation measured by the CPI, will not be more than 10% lower than it was on May 27, […]