Bob Murphy

Author Archive

Black Friday 2017 Liberty Classroom Deal

Hey boys and girls, Tom Woods has a special offer for his Liberty Classroom. If you order the top Master Level subscription (i.e. this offer doesn’t apply to the lower tier options) anytime through Cyber Monday (i.e. Nov. 27, 2017), you get $200 off the normal price. In addition, if you use this link when you […]

How to Beam Factories to Mars

I give some practical instruction in this piece. An excerpt: Now suppose that the Martians finally get their wifi routers working, and they are shocked to discover intelligent life on the nearby blue planet. After figuring out how to communicate and consummate financial transactions, an amazing thing happens: Massive amounts of financial capital from human […]

The Lara-Murphy Show Episode 45: The GOP Tax Plans, Theory & History

In the latest episode I first walk through the standard theory of tax reform, explaining why different types of taxes have different impacts on behavior. (I make it clear that I’m not endorsing any of these taxes–as they are all coercive–but am just trying to get people to see the logic driving the “mainstream” discussion.) […]

Did God Forsake Jesus on the Cross?

This is the account Matthew gives of Jesus’ death on the cross: 45 From noon until three in the afternoon darkness came over all the land. 46 About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).[d] 47 […]

Krugman, the Slippery One

As the man who coined the term “Krugman Kontradiction,” I am familiar with how the Nobelist can write misleading things without technically stating a falsehood. And yet, for a few moments I was scratching my head over a statement Krugman made in his latest op ed. While excoriating the Senate version of the tax plan–and […]

Potpourri

==> Just to give you a heads’ up, I have a post in the pipeline to come out at Mises.org, riffing off this Krugman blog about Martians trading with Earthlings. So if you want to read his post to get your imagination chugging, it might make my post (which will run next week, I presume) […]

Jordan Peterson on Harry Potter, Jung, Rom Coms, You Name It

As I’ve said before, it’s a shame that the pronoun controversy has overshadowed his academic perspective (though it obviously gave him a bigger platform). If you’ve wondered why everyone fanbois over JP so much, this is a great sample. It’s 20 minutes taken from one of his college lectures. I for one would not have […]

Murphy Twin Spin

==> Here’s the latest Contra Krugman, where we talk about corporate tax cuts and Krugman’s Kontradictions. ==> In this IER post, I come up with a car analogy to try to motivate deadweight loss, and give intuition for why a carbon tax–even if revenue-neutral–would reduce conventional economic growth. (To be sure, that by itself doesn’t […]