Economic Trends
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Anatomy of the Great Suppression
The Great Suppression, a severe contraction in business activity caused by a government crackdown on capitalist acts between consenting adults, is an awful calamity. Government’s grip will be loosened once the crisis passes, but it will likely be tighter post-crisis versus pre-crisis.
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Why Is There No COVID-19 Life Insurance?
The existence of such insurance would help to quell fears by allowing underinsured households the opportunity to protect their incomes.
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Intelligence Is Better than Panic
AIER has become a leading voice for understanding during these times, helping to balance out the media-fueled panic that has gripped our country.
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Let’s Please Not Insult ‘Stimulus’ By Calling This ‘Stimulus’
It’s not unreasonable to assume that if asked, most who’ve heard of supply-side economics would identify it as the Laffer Curve. The previous curve, named for the great Arthur Laffer, is one of life’s truisms: reduce the tax penalty levied on labor, and the result is usually more labor producing more taxable revenue.
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Is this the End of Globalization?
Global Supply Chains began to truncate in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. The global COVID-19 lockdown has accelerated the process. Businesses will reassess the trade-off between efficiency and resilience. Supply chain resilience is not without cost.
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The Anatomy of the Crash of 2020
Whatever you think about the virus threat, and even if you think all this is justified in the name of stopping the spread, let’s not be confused about what drove this disaster from the beginning: the fear that politics would attack commercial society at its root.
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The Fed and the Mad Urge to Do Something
Panicked markets, eye-popping declines, and inept public policy are, in some unfortunate sense, a human universal. And all public officials, it seems, imitate one another, no matter how mad, impotent, or harmful the policy.
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The Parasites Exacerbating COVID-19
The so-far easy acceptance of the government’s medieval reaction to the spread of a not very lethal virus to a vanishingly small percentage of the population suggests that universities are not helping Americans to overcome the many behavioral biases they inherited from their cavemen ancestors.
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To Kill Markets Is the Worst Possible Plan
This whole ghastly episode could become another teaching moment in misguided and damaging government policies that markets, once again, successfully endured and survived.
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Those Shelves Wouldn’t Be Empty If We Hadn’t Stopped “Capitalism”
This is a difficult time for a lot of people, and it’s understandable and admirably humane to want to help others in their time of need. We aren’t doing them any favors, however, by saying that they won’t be allowed to pay very much for a bottle of hand sanitizer they can’t get anyway.
-
•
Anatomy of the Great Suppression
The Great Suppression, a severe contraction in business activity caused by a government crackdown on capitalist acts between consenting adults, is an awful calamity. Government’s grip will be loosened once the crisis passes, but it will likely be tighter post-crisis versus pre-crisis.
-
•
Why Is There No COVID-19 Life Insurance?
The existence of such insurance would help to quell fears by allowing underinsured households the opportunity to protect their incomes.
-
•
Intelligence Is Better than Panic
AIER has become a leading voice for understanding during these times, helping to balance out the media-fueled panic that has gripped our country.
-
•
Let’s Please Not Insult ‘Stimulus’ By Calling This ‘Stimulus’
It’s not unreasonable to assume that if asked, most who’ve heard of supply-side economics would identify it as the Laffer Curve. The previous curve, named for the great Arthur Laffer, is one of life’s truisms: reduce the tax penalty levied on labor, and the result is usually more labor producing more taxable revenue.
-
•
Is this the End of Globalization?
Global Supply Chains began to truncate in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008. The global COVID-19 lockdown has accelerated the process. Businesses will reassess the trade-off between efficiency and resilience. Supply chain resilience is not without cost.
-
•
The Anatomy of the Crash of 2020
Whatever you think about the virus threat, and even if you think all this is justified in the name of stopping the spread, let’s not be confused about what drove this disaster from the beginning: the fear that politics would attack commercial society at its root.
-
•
The Fed and the Mad Urge to Do Something
Panicked markets, eye-popping declines, and inept public policy are, in some unfortunate sense, a human universal. And all public officials, it seems, imitate one another, no matter how mad, impotent, or harmful the policy.
-
•
The Parasites Exacerbating COVID-19
The so-far easy acceptance of the government’s medieval reaction to the spread of a not very lethal virus to a vanishingly small percentage of the population suggests that universities are not helping Americans to overcome the many behavioral biases they inherited from their cavemen ancestors.
-
•
To Kill Markets Is the Worst Possible Plan
This whole ghastly episode could become another teaching moment in misguided and damaging government policies that markets, once again, successfully endured and survived.
-
•
Those Shelves Wouldn’t Be Empty If We Hadn’t Stopped “Capitalism”
This is a difficult time for a lot of people, and it’s understandable and admirably humane to want to help others in their time of need. We aren’t doing them any favors, however, by saying that they won’t be allowed to pay very much for a bottle of hand sanitizer they can’t get anyway.