Fuller on the Tom Woods Show

My friend and colleague, Caleb Fuller, recently appeared on the Tom Woods Show discussing his new book No Free Lunch. While I have not investigated the matter exhaustively I venture to guess that the Grove City College Economics program is the only one in country that has achieved 100 percent representation on the Tom Woods Show! Listen, learn, and buy the book:

Loury on the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America

 Glenn Loury, the distinguished economist at Brown University and host of  The Glenn Show, recently presented provocatively stark words about the persistence of racial inequality in America. After his remarks, presented to an academic group at Baylor University, he participates in a Q & A facilitated by my friend and Chair of the Baylor's Department of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Peter G. Klein.

 

Gordon on Fuller's No Free Lunch

David Gordon reviews No Free Lunch, the new book by my colleague Caleb Fuller. In his assessment, he praises Fuller noting that, in his analysis of economic falacies, he "follows Frédéric Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt, and he is a worthy successor of them." Gordon says the work itself is "an ideal book for introductory economics classes and for anyone who wants to understand how the free market works." High praise. 

Mises at Harvard

 In 1940, soon after Mises arrived in the United States, he was invited by the Economics Department at Harvard University to give a lecture to their graduate students. E. H. Chamberlin wrote the letter inviting him to speak. 

Dear Dr. von Mises:

            The Department of Economics at Harvard would like to offer their graduate students the privilege of meeting you and hearing you while you are in this country. Would it be possible for you to speak at Harvard on the evening of either December 5 or December 12? If so, I should be glad to receive from you suggestions as to possible subjects. We should hope, too, that you would be able to remain in Cambridge for a day or so in order to give students and others a chance to talk with you informally. An honorarium of $100 will be paid (from which you would be expected to meet your own travelling expenses).

            I very much hope you will be able to accept this invitation.

Sincerely yours,

 

E. H. Chamberlin

 You can read Mises' reply by clicking here.

Fuller on No Free Lunch

 My former student and now colleague Caleb Fuller has written a new book, No Free Lunch, that is both readable and insightful. He dismantles economic myths people still believe, which makes his book well suited to our time.

As Fuller relates in an interview discussing the book and why it is important,

Economics is deadly serious business. For many people in the modern world and throughout history, getting the economics right means the difference between life and death. Inspired by Hazlitt and Frederic Bastiat before him, I wanted to communicate the basic principles of economics, and what it tells us about human flourishing, to a new generation.

Supply-Chain Shortage or Merely Central Planning?

 John Tamny says Central planning:

The supply lines of February 2020 were impossibly complicated structures that no politician could ever hope to design. Think billions of individuals around the world pursuing their narrow work specialization on the way to enormous global plenty. Put another way, the shelves in economically free countries were heaving with all manner of products based on economic cooperation that was staggering in scope. Brilliant as some experts claim to be, and brilliant as some politicians think they are as they look in the mirror, they could never construct the web of trillions of economic relationships that prevailed before the lockdowns. But they could destroy the web. And they did; that, or they severely impaired it.

You can read the rest by clicking here.

If you are interested in a thorough theoretical critique of a variety of forms of central planning, I recommend Hans-Hermann Hoppe's A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism.

Tax the Rich!

That is the cry splashed in red on the back of the dress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sported at the Metropolitan Opera's opening Gala. The is another manifestation of what Mises called the anti-capitalistic mentality. 

 It turns out, of course, that we are already taxing the rich:

 

According the Tax Foundation, in 2018 the top 50% of income earners pay slightly over 97% of all tax revenue. The top 10% of income earners pay over 71% of taxes. The top 1% pay over 40% of all taxes. Meanwhile, those in the bottom half of income earners paid a mere 2.9% of the taxes taken in by the government in 2018.