Economics

Archive for Economics

Why the Current Unemployment Is Worse Than the Great Depression

My latest as mises.org. The key point: However, besides this technical issue, there is a much more fundamental difference between unemployment in the early 1930s and today: back then, the people out of work had been laid off. Yet today, the people out of work are in lockdown. This is an enormous distinction. When the economy crashed […]

Do the Econ Textbooks Get Money & Banking Backwards?

The latest installment in my series on Understanding Money Mechanics for the Mises Institute. Once I dove into this one, the solutions seemed pretty obvious. Tell me what you folks think. An excerpt: In chapter 5 we reviewed the textbook analysis of how a central bank buys government debt in “open market operations” to add […]

Murphy Twin Spin at Mises Wire

I may have already posted these… At Mises.org I recently had a post on Robert Reich and billionaires, and another on managed trade agreements.

Wealth vs. Income Taxes

Ever since wealth taxes have entered the political discussion, I’ve been trying to put my finger on why they are even more destructive than income taxes. Some early attempts had people arguing that–if we assume assets are earning 3%–then a 3% wealth tax operates just like a 103% income tax. However, that wasn’t quite right, […]

Bob Murphy Show Twin Spin

In ep. 80 I reproduced my interview with Patrick from the “Cave to the Cross” apologetics podcast (video below). Among other things, we tackled the question, “Would the laws of economics be true in the Garden of Eden?” Then in ep. 81 I have Jeffrey Rogers Hummel on to talk more about the economics of […]

Murphy + von Pepe > 2 Nobel Laureates

In my latest piece for Mises.org, I push back on two of the recent Nobel laureates when they claimed in the NYT that financial incentives don’t matter as much as economists think. Since they had invoked salary caps in sports as an example, I acquired the assistance of the intrepid von Pepe to give me […]

Murphy Stuff

==> Ep. 51 of the Bob Murphy Show features Hannah Cox explaining why conservatives should oppose the death penalty. ==> I take on Joe Weisenthal on negative interest rates. ==> I argue that, contrary to some leftist progressives, slavery was nota boon for American capitalism. Excerpts: There is no doubt that a healthy adult slave […]

The Case for Legalizing Blackmail

Seriously I am just a rebel. Where else do you get hard-hitting stuff like this? An excerpt: The interesting aspect of this system is that it would provide an informal means of “fining” people for violating social taboos. Although this might strike some (such as Scott Sumner, whom we’ll discuss in the next section) as […]