…Be a Shame If Somebody Tried to Falsify It The Foundation for Economic Education’s specialty is making “arguments” via the uncritical assertion of right-wing talking points. If anybody’s the go-to guy for that, it’s Walter Block — especially when if it’s the worn-out “minimum wages cause unemployment” talking point (“Will an Increase in the Minimum…

A report submitted to the EU in September, as interpreted by Michael Roberts, casts considerable doubt on the standard right-libertarian party line regarding investment.  The standard right-libertarian talking point is that labor is dependent on investment, that investment — in the form either of credit or equity — comes from previous capital accumulation, and that…

Last month, on Twitter, Bernie Sanders tweeted (Jan. 2):  The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire “the best and the brightest,” but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad. The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make. This is the latest…

Advocates of Basic Income have trotted out a lot of arguments for its benefits, but I never expected John Stossel (“Universal Basic Income Shows Why Giving People ‘Free Money’ Doesn’t Work,” Reason, October 9) to produce such a convincing one. When I was young, If I hadn’t needed to work to support myself, I wouldn’t…

The day after Elon Musk’s infamous use of the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute in an Inauguration Day speech, Thomas Lecaque — a professor of history specializing in religious violence — pointedly observed: “Elon Musk did a Nazi salute. There isn’t a discussion, there aren’t interpretations, this isn’t a controversy, there are people lying about it…

In the short term, our focus should be on the things C4SS comrade William Gillis discussed eight years ago in the aftermath of Trump’s election to his first term:  minimizing our exposure to harm, and building an infrastructure for support, protection and mutual aid. Kelly Hayes sums up this general approach as well as anyone…

Once again, we’re back in the same situation as eight years ago. Since the nightmare on election night many, myself included, have been catastrophizing the possible scenarios beginning on January 20. We’re all aware of the awful threats from Trump and his agenda: Mass deportation. Attacks on reproductive freedom at the federal level. The use…

If you’re a Trump Voter, the Answer may Surprise you. What Trump Supporters think tariffs are For nearly a decade now, Donald Trump has been promoting tariffs as a tool of choice for solving America’s economic woes, at one point calling them “the greatest thing ever invented.” He has made them a central point of…

At Reason, C.J. Ciaramella (“Tim Scott Says UAW Workers Should Be Fired, Invoking Ronald Reagan”) gives GOP Presidential hopeful Tim Scott two stars for his proposal to fire striking auto workers like Reagan fired striking air traffic controllers and broke PATCO: “He said, you strike, you’re fired. Simple concept to me. To the extent that…

Frank Wilhoit’s definition of conservatism (about which much more below) was not, as you would expect from something so incisive and widely quoted, formulated years ago in a scholarly book or article. It appeared only six years ago, in a lengthy comment by Wilhoit (a composer and music theorist), under a blog post by Henry…

Billy Binion  (“Juneteenth is a Celebration of Freedom,” Reason, June 19) writes that, despite widespread right-wing aversion to Juneteenth as a holiday, the GOP “in some sense still fashions itself as the party of freedom.” Matt Yglesias is most famous these days for his almost daily garbage takes; but years ago, back when the Republican…

I find fodder for op-eds in some of the strangest places. I came across this video (“Politics is NOT a zero-sum game,” by Shai Davidai) in a HIT posted on Amazon Mechanical Turk by Davidai — an academic study in which he gauged viewers’ reactions to it. (For those who don’t know, Mechanical Turk is…

In a column four years ago, I recounted the experience of a friend in academia with the godawful “learning management software” which her institution required for designing exams. She complained that she was trying to create a midterm exam and “blackboard is complete fucking garbage. No intuitive way to break up questions into sections, can’t…

…what do you get? Answer: “Special Little Freedom Zones.” That’s what Reason’s Liz Wolfe calls the Honduran “charter cities,” officially known as ZEDEs  (Zones for Economic Development and Employment), which were declared illegal in September by the Honduran Supreme Court (“No More Special Little Freedom Zones,” September 25). The ruling prohibits the creation of new…

For more years than most of us have been alive, by-the-numbers “minimum wage increases cause unemployment” puff pieces have been an almost daily staple at right-libertarian propaganda sites like Foundation for Economic Education. As I remark every time I see one — more than once in written commentary — these people demonstrate a lack of…

At Foundation for Economic Education, Preston Brashers — commenting on a statement by Bernie Sanders that this country can’t afford a billionaire class which is at war with working families — replied (“What the Socialist Left Fails to Grasp about Wealth and Innovation in America,” June 28):  But when you consider the vital economic activities…

Some time ago, in a Facebook argument, I encountered someone who repeated the old “exchange of unequals” argument (i.e., that people never exchange equivalents because each party values what they got more than what they traded for it). I responded that this argument confuses exchange value with use value and that, regardless of subjective valuation,…

If there’s one leitmotif in Jacob Hornberger’s commentary at the Future of Freedom Foundation over the years, it’s that unlimited accumulation of capital by the super-rich is the pathway to prosperity. That musical phrase received its latest tinny, tinkling iteration in “The Importance of Capital” (March 13): I was recently walking through a construction site…

At Foundation for Economic Education (“The Ego vs. the Machine,” February 24), self-described “techno-optimist” Dylan Allman dismisses recent controversies over AI as a simple matter of wounded egos. “They feel, on some instinctual level, that if machines can do what they do — only better, faster, and more efficiently — then what value do they…

At Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown (“Feds Make a Pharma Patent Grab”) gives new meaning to the term “grab.” Most people would consider a state-granted monopoly on the right to produce something to be in itself a grab. But not Brown.  The Biden administration recently invoked the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, in claiming the right to…