The term crony capitalism has appeared frequently in the popular press of late, but rarely has it been used—let alone defined—in the academic literature. Independent Institute Research Fellow Randall G. Holcombe, a frequent contributor to The Beacon, helps remedy this deficiency in an article published in the Spring 2013 issue of The Independent Review. “Crony capitalism,”...
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In recent blog posts I’ve discussed how the Affordable Care Act creates perverse incentives for employers and insurers. In this piece I’ll touch briefly on how it creates perverse incentives for individuals. (For more discussion, please see my Independent Institute book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis.) One can get a glimpse of the problem...
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Quite apart from the perverse economic incentives the subsidies of the Affordable Care Act create, the subsidies are completely arbitrary and unfair. For example, a $31,200-a-year family (about 133 percent of poverty) getting health insurance at work gets less than one-fourth as much help from the government, compared to a family making nearly three...
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The recent report that the standard (U-3) rate of unemployment fell to 7.7 percent last month seems to have stirred considerable joy in Mudville. But before we spend a lot of time shouting huzzahs, we might well bear in mind a few other data and, of course, recall that not so long ago, a...
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Among the celebrants at the inaugural balls will be top contributors to the President’s reelection campaign, but their real celebration will be April 15, when they continue to be the beneficiaries of a “tax loophole” Obama pledged to close in 2008—but that remains gaping wide open despite his rhetoric about now making “the rich”...
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The notion that the Second World War is responsible for ending the Great Depression has met growing skepticism among economic historians, thanks in no small part to the work of Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs. Beginning with an article that first appeared in the Journal of Economic History in 1992, Higgs has argued...
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Back in the day, the federal government issued needy people books of food stamps with which they could buy approved items such as milk, bread, and meat. Of course, an easy trick for the recipients was to present a $20 coupon for a small purchase. They would then receive cash back. With that cash,...
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When Paul Krugman starts attacking us, we know we’re doing something right. John Maynard Keynes’s presumptive heir, Krugman apparently doesn’t like the findings of our recent book edited by Research Fellow David Beckworth, Boom & Bust Banking: The Causes and Cures of the Great Recession, exposing the profound fallacies of Lord Keynes’s love affair...
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Since the fall of 2008, the Federal Reserve System has pumped an almost incomprehensibly large amount of reserves into the commercial banking system—about $1.4 trillion. In normal circumstances, this action would have given rise to hyperinflation. Of course, not only has no hyperinflation occurred, but scarcely any inflation at all has occurred, and policy...
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Wow, are people still talking about Big Bird? Romney said in the domestic policy debate last week that he would cut federal funding to PBS. Obama’s supporters responded with a flurry of media attention. Who knew this was such a third rail? Romney’s critics are right that ending PBS subsidies would not make a...
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