Bob Murphy

Author Archive

A Bald Economist Gives Financial Advice to Young People

That was my original title, but the suits in Auburn toned it down. An excerpt: It seems counterintuitive, but when a religious person tithes (or when a nonreligious person gives to charitable causes) there is somehow more money each month to work with. For tithing — where a person is supposed to give a specific […]

Jesus Spoke Logically on Miracles

This is perhaps an anal little point, but apropos my thoughts on miracles and the laws of physics–where I say that by definition, God can’t break the laws of physics, because if He did then they wouldn’t be laws–here is Jesus (Mk 10: 23-27): 23 Then Jesus looked around and said to His disciples, “How […]

Scott Sumner, the Unbeatable Foe

When last we left, in March our anti-hero Scott Sumner was hanging up the keyboard, having taken credit for getting Bernanke to inflate more, and thereby creating several trillion dollars in worldwide wealth. But now Scott’s back, and his printing press is more powerful than ever. In the comments of a recent post, I was […]

Attack of the Gnomes

Krugman has his alien invasion, but now the Austrians can say: The Keynesian focus on aggregates such as the “stock” of capital and “supply of labor” leads to faulty policy recommendations. The Austrian School has always had a rich conception of the structure of production. Of the major schools of thought, only the Austrians can […]

Another Screen Shot, Please

Can someone capture this headline before they fix it? Thanks to Taylor Conant:

Murphy vs. Graeber vs. Murphy vs. Graeber

I’m not going to give all the links (they are available if you click on the following), but here is the compilation of anthropologist David Graeber’s response to my article, and then here is my follow-up. An excerpt: Graeber admits too that the temple authorities didn’t just independently pick silver because it was lying around. […]

Funny Graphic on Ron Paul from MSNBC

[UPDATE below.] Someone who knows how the Intertubes work, please get a screenshot of this. Check out how the poll results are graphed here. Notice anything funny, that might set off a paranoid Ron Paul fan? (I’ll update this post if someone can get me the screen shot.) UPDATE: Thanks to Isaac for sending me […]

Did I Ever Predict Hyperinflation?

[Ironic UPDATE below.] One of the standard criticisms of guys like Peter Schiff (and lesser mortals such as me) is that we’ve been falsely calling for hyperinflation for a few years now. For example, Krugman repeatedly rips Schiff on this score, and links people to a Google search of “Peter Schiff hyperinflation 2009.” (Incidentally, I […]