Consulting by RPM || Free Advice Blog

Potpourri

I’m almost giddy for tonight’s Potpourri. I don’t know if I’m in a good mood and see the creativity and courage out there in the blogosphere, or if my blogging peers are all having a good week. In any event, here goes: ==> Paul Krugman recently wrote that the US was doing pretty good during […]

David R. Henderson, Manipulator of Crowds

David posted the below video of his talk at Middle Tennessee State University, on how economists helped end the draft. I haven’t watched this particular talk, but I’ve seen/read David on this topic before, and it’s really good stuff to help all of us think that maybe we can make a difference. However, the real […]

Condi Rice a Stranger to Cost/Benefit Analysis

It’s funny, Steve Landsburg is gushing over Condoleeza Rice’s speech at the RNC (though he is careful to say he doesn’t endorse everything she said), whereas I had to turn it off when I caught it in the car. Why did I flip it off? Because I caught it on this part, which a lot […]

The Market for Security (Mises 2012)

This is one of the talks I gave in Auburn in late July. I run through an economic case for complete privatization of judicial, police, and military services.

The Myth of Wartime Prosperity

This ran a while ago but I forgot to blog about it. Half of my piece is just the standard case against World War II “prosperity,” with a link to Steve Horwitz’s co-authored piece drawing on primary sources to show how tough things were on the homefront. However, after that I take Krugman et al. […]

Federal Government Outlays and Receipts as % of Nominal GDP

Here you go kids: So as I exclaimed in an earlier post, the receipts line shocked me. I have been working a lot with federal spending and knew about the WW2 bulge, but you can see how it crashed right after the war. (This gave rise to all the songs we still sing to this […]

Bob Higgs Was an Optimist: No “Ratchet Effect” When It Comes to Federal Tax Receipts

[UPDATE in text.] I am working on a project for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, summarizing the U.S. government’s sorry fiscal situation. I worked up a chart showing the history of federal spending from FY 1930-2011, and it was just what I expected: big surge up through World War II, then a major pullback, and finally a […]

Why Conservatives and Progressives Are Both Right and Wrong