Bob Murphy

Author Archive

The Master Plan

In preparation for a presentation Carlos Lara and I gave at the recent Infinite Banking Concept (IBC) Think Tank, our go-to guy on all technical matters, John Connolly, found some really cool footage in the national archives. I asked John to cull out the promotional stuff and just show the historical footage. They were trying […]

In Which I Charge Into Kling’s Red Cape

Arnold Kling, after telling MMT proponents that sometimes printing money can cause prices to rise too quickly: Consider another group of crackpots, the gold standard advocates. They say that a dollar should be a physical unit of measurement, meaning x grams of gold. Having the value of the dollar fluctuate is like having the length […]

The Joke’s On Me

Over at EconLog Bryan Caplan writes: “Stand up for yourself” isn’t just overrated; it’s also misdirected. We’re quickest to dispense this advice to the people least likely to benefit from it. Consider: If you have wealth and power, standing up for yourself tends to work well. But we usually advise the wealthy and powerful to […]

Landsburg versus the LORD

[Editor’s note: People had such fun with “The Economist Zone” that I thought the same vehicle might be useful on this grander topic. In contrast to the debate over the government debt, however, on these weighty matters I’m not as sure what Steve Landsburg’s views are, and I have even less confidence in the statements […]

Answers to Reddit “Ask Me Anything”

I know the synch gets way out of whack on this, but I’ve already put a bunch of time into this and I really have to move on with my life. Pretend it’s a kung fu movie, or that I’m transmitting from a Martian base.

1950s High Tax Rate Bask

I am working on an article with a prominent supply-side economist dealing with the frequent objection, “If marginal income tax rates on the rich are so important, how come the economy boomed in the 1950s?” I know I’ve read lots of progressives making this type of comment over the least 3 years, but I can’t […]

Potpourri

* Walter Block can die now, after this moving tribute from Lew Rockwell. * What it looks like when Brad DeLong says, “Yeah, I was unfair to Ludwig von Mises.” As an added bonus, the concession was wrung by Gene Callahan! (It’s not April 1, right?) * A lot of people liked this Tom Woods […]

Potpourri

* My cousin Frank alerted me to the termination (of his contract, not his heartbeat) of Pat Buchanan. And here I was, thinking I had a shot at the slot after Maddow. * Dan Carroll, the guy who blogs about counterproductive government foreign-adoption policies, had an exchange with me in the comments of Bryan Caplan’s […]