Bob Murphy

Author Archive

“Surely the American People Would Never Let That Happen!”

I was telling my son about Obama’s “secret kill list” and W. Bush’s global secret prison network and realized I had made a whole video about it (that I then forced him to watch). I wouldn’t have my so do something without forcing you to as well: It takes me a minute to get going […]

More Examples of Intellectuals Not Really Believing Their ‘Shocking’ Claims

Recently I pointed out that (a) with the release of his second-last book, Bryan Caplan spent a lot of time debunking the popular notion that parents can influence their kids, (b) with the release of his most recent book, Bryan spent a lot of time debunking the popular notion that education can influence kids, and […]

The Man Who Knew Infinity

I watched this last night: It was good stuff, especially because I didn’t catch them doing any Hollywood absurdities (a la John Nash explaining the exact opposite of a Nash equilibrium in the bar scene in A Beautiful Mind). What was interesting is that Ramanujan said, “An equation for me has no meaning unless it […]

Contra Krugman AND Sumner on Nominal Wage Growth

My latest at Mises.org. It’s too long to summarize, except don’t miss my analogy: [S]uppose a father sees his 25-year-old son lounging on the couch watching reruns. The father exclaims, “Jimmy, this has got to stop! All through your teenage years you kept getting raises and better jobs. But after your messy breakup last year, […]

Nothing New Under the Sun

In my Bible study we are plodding through Numbers and we looked up the maps to see the Israelites’ route over the 40 years from the Exodus until entering the Promised Land. (TL;DR it was out of Egypt, through modern-day Israel, Jordan, and maybe Syria [just eyeballing the map].) It was amazing to me, since […]

Ideas for Bryan Caplan’s Next Book

It just occurred to me last night that two books ago, Bryan (among other things) told parents that they should quit worrying, because studies of twins show that parents don’t have any lasting influence on their children’s futures. Now in his latest book, Bryan tells teachers and professors that education has no lasting influence on […]

One Cheer and One Criticism for Don Boudreaux on Trade Deficits

(Notice kids that I’m doing this on my personal blog; I’m not picking a public fight with Don. Also, if Don has anything to say in response, I will edit this post and paste his reaction into the body, below.) I think it’s fair to say that nobody has been hammering home the case for […]

Potpourri

==> How do you choose among your children? This is in the top 5 of my all-time favorite Contra Krugman episodes. ==> The latest Lara-Murphy Show discusses “Lessons from History” (chapter 6 of our new book with Nelson Nash). ==> REMEMBER CHICAGO PEOPLE: Carlos, David Stearns, and I will be presenting on Austrian economics and […]