Of all the actions the U.S. government has taken during the coronavirus pandemic, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) has been one of the most effective in achieving its desired results. The PPP provided $510 billion in emergency loans to small businesses to let them continue paying the incomes of their employees as they were…
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The arrival of COVID-19 has brought with it an unprecedented and uncertain situation in many ways. One uncertainty is that because the disease is novel, we don’t know its future trajectory. Another uncertainty is how rapidly governments will move to lift restrictions on economic activity. That is something government officials can choose. Yet another…
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There is still a lot we don’t know about the COVID-19 pandemic, but one thing we do know is that those most at risk of death are the elderly and people with other underlying health problems. While there is a small risk of death for people who are healthy and young, most healthy young…
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The obvious answer to the question in my title–that unemployment is rising because of the COVID-19 pandemic–is not quite correct. The virus is not causing unemployment to rise. The government’s response to the virus is causing unemployment to rise. I won’t offer an opinion on whether the government response, overall, goes too far or…
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Joseph Schumpeter described capitalism as a process of creative destruction, and an economic system that is always changing, never stationary. He called capitalism an evolutionary process and said the engine that keeps the economy advancing is entrepreneurship. In a capitalist economy, people get ahead by being entrepreneurial: looking for ways to create value for…
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People tend to view taxes in one of two ways. One view is that taxes are the price people pay for government goods and services. The other is that taxes are a penalty levied on people who earn income or have wealth. Elizabeth Warren’s proposed wealth tax takes the second view.

Are policies to reduce inequality beneficial to those who are least fortunate? Sometimes they are; sometimes they are not.

One of the most frequent shortcomings of capitalism cited by capitalism’s critics is inequality.

Selective excise taxes may raise revenue for the public sector by targeting the consumption of things that elites disdain, but they do not save millions of lives.

Apart from practical difficulties and impossibilities, a Trumpian trade triumph, even if it could be achieved, would be a horrible objective to attain.