Liberty and Power

• Jun 24, 2014 6:27 pm
  

  Confessions of a reformed activist

  by Phillip Magness

  When advising politically-inclined students – and working at a DC based academic research institute and Public Policy department ensures I have many of these – I often counsel them to eschew electoral politics entirely, to  approach policy careers with managed and severely constrained expectations about the results they can expect to achieve, and to generally shed the instinctual habits of activism. To the politically enthused and – more so – the idealist who seeks to better the world in which he or she lives, this message is both exceedingly difficult to receive and counter-intuitive to almost everything they've been brought up to believe about democracy, participatory government, and attaining social change.
  

• Jun 24, 2014 6:18 pm
  

  Immigration and Mindless Partisanship

  by Anthony Gregory

  About two-thirds of Americans disapprove of Obama’s immigration policies. The polling reveals extreme partisanship: 60% of Democrats and 8% of Republicans approve of the president’s approach.
  

• Jun 24, 2014 6:12 pm
  

  The Middle East Harvests Bitter Imperialist Fruit

  by Sheldon Richman

  The wall-to-wall coverage of the disintegration of Iraq ought to carry this credit: This bloodshed was made possible by the generosity of British and French imperialists.
  

• Jun 20, 2014 4:43 pm
  

  Abraham Lincoln and the Corwin Amendment

  by Phillip Magness

  Most serious historical overviews of the Civil War contain at least a brief mention of the Corwin Amendment, the last-ditch compromise effort to protect slavery where it existed by enshrining it in the Constitution. They also do so tepidly and seldom acknowledge it as anything more than a historical footnote.
  

• Jun 20, 2014 3:58 pm
  

  Thaddeus Stevens and Colonization

  by Phillip Magness

  Did Rep. Thaddeus Stevens pledge to support the revival of the colonization office during Lincoln’s second term? That is the direct insinuation of an unsent letter from 1865 bearing the Radical Republican leader’s endorsement.
  

• Jun 19, 2014 7:44 pm
  

  Stop the Surveillance State

  by Anthony Gregory

  After 9/11, the Bush administration unveiled plans to create an integrated, comprehensive surveillance state unprecedented in human history. The public rebelled against “total information awareness,” but the NSA and other government agencies continued constructing a spying infrastructure of previously unimaginable proportions. Despite the administration’s promise that all war on terror surveillance satisfied traditional warrant requirements, the NSA circumvented even FISA’s loose restrictions to spy on American telecommunications.
  

• Jun 18, 2014 8:46 pm
  

  Enemies of Enemies

  by Anthony Gregory

  The Obama administration is considering working with the Iranian government to deal with the full-blown horrors currently plaguing Iraq. As a non-interventionist, I’m committed to opposing such an approach. If I were a pragmatic realist or a utilitarian I’d be tempted to agree that such an alliance would be the lesser of evils, although as clear as that might seem today, I’d still have my reservations.
  

• Jun 18, 2014 8:27 pm
  

  The Noninterventionists Told You So

  by Sheldon Richman

  Contrary to popular belief, there is no satisfaction in being able to say, “I told you so.” This is especially so with Iraq, where recent events are enough to sicken one’s stomach. Yet it still must be said: those who opposed the George W. Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq in March 2003 — not to mention his father’s war on Iraq in 1991 and the sanctions enforced through the administration of Bill Clinton — were right.
  

• Jun 14, 2014 6:44 pm
  

  Chances Are that You Have No More Expertise in Economics than You Have in Astrophysics

  by Robert Higgs

  For the general public, economic policy is a tragic matter because regardless of what the man in the street may think, the government’s actions almost invariably make economic life worse than it would have been had the policy makers kept their hands off of it.
  

• Jun 14, 2014 6:40 pm
  

  Do You Really Want to Be Correct?

  by Wendy McElroy

  Evidence that something is wrong with a theory is rarely as obvious as a trout in the milk. This is particularly true when a belief is deeply-held or invested with emotion.
  

• Jun 14, 2014 6:24 pm
  

  Is the NDAA Notification Requirement Unconstitutional?

  by Anthony Gregory

  If Obama is right about the NDAA, he should start releasing far more prisoners from Guantánamo. A firestorm has erupted over the Obama administration’s release of five Guantánamo captives in exchange for the Taliban’s release of American soldier Bowe Bergdahl. Putting aside all the rest of the strategic, moral, and practical arguments, I want to focus on the legal side. Many of Obama’s critics say that his move violated the NDAA notification requirement, signed by Obama (who issued a signing statement suggesting he thought it was unconstitutional). The requirement mandates that the president inform Congress of Guantánamo releases.
  

• Jun 14, 2014 6:22 pm
  

  Are Some Groups More Equal Than Others?

  by Jonathan J. Bean

  In the recent Schuette v. BAMN decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of voters to amend the Michigan Constitution by guaranteeing Equal Protection to individuals in state university admission. The Court’s 6-2 majority split in its reasoning, with several justices citing recent decisions upholding “permissible” racial discrimination when the Court deems it acceptable. There is, however, no such “permissibility” language in the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
  

• Jun 14, 2014 6:19 pm
  

  Press TV Interview

  by Sheldon Richman

  Press TV interviewed me about U.S. policy toward Ukraine. You can listen here. 
  

• Jun 14, 2014 5:56 pm
  

  The Disaster That Is U.S. Foreign Policy

  by Sheldon Richman

  We live in angry times. For evidence, turn on any news program. An awful lot of people, led by right-wing politicians and radio and TV entertainers, are angry at Barack Obama for trading five Taliban officials, who have been held for years without charge in the Guantánamo prison, for an American soldier, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who apparently walked away from his outpost after having a change of heart about the Afghan war. The Right is apoplectic.
  

• Jun 13, 2014 7:41 pm
  

  A Soviet Devil in the Capitalist Details

  by Phillip Magness

  The other day I began scrutinizing Thomas Piketty’s data on capital to national income ratios and particularly the twice-published Figure 5.8/12.4. This graph provides an important piece of evidence for Piketty’s theoretical argument in Capital in the 21st Century, and particularly his contention that “a country that saves a lot and grows slowly will over the long run accumulate an enormous stock of capital (relative to its income), which can in turn have a significant effect on the social structure and distribution of wealth.” This “law” of capital accumulation, along with Piketty’s much quoted formula r>g, is supposed to demonstrate the central argument of his book wherein returns on capital outpace income, leading to sustained wealth disparity.
  

• Jun 8, 2014 10:54 pm
  

  Politics, Not Economics, Driving Minimum Wage

  by Wendy McElroy

  On April 30, the Senate voted 54-42 to end debate on the Minimum Wage Fairness Act and effectively shelved it for the foreseeable future. The act would have raised the minimum wage of federal workers to $10.10 by 2016 and indexed it to inflation thereafter. Championed by Democrats and opposed by Republicans, minimum wage will be a flash point in the November elections. But does minimum wage genuinely help the workers that Democrats claim it benefits: the young, the poor, immigrants and women?
  

• Jun 8, 2014 7:44 pm
  

  Data Problems with Piketty’s Capital/Income Ratios

  by Phillip Magness

  The post that follows is a bit more technical than my other posts on the data problems with Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century. It also involves a more complex piece of his data, though one with significant implications to his general theory about a hypothesized inherent tendency of capital returns to outpace other earnings.
  

• Jun 7, 2014 11:14 pm
  

  The Achilles Heel of Libertarian War Theory: Who Decides?

  by Wendy McElroy

  Can a libertarian support or engage in war? Some libertarians point to the right of self-defense to justify going to war. An individual has the right to defend himself with deadly force, if necessary, against an aggressor. If you multiply the justified individual by hundreds of thousands, they argue, then you create an army of people who can collectively and rightfully exercise their self-defense. From this point, debate on the propriety of a libertarian war usually revolves around issues such as the inevitable harm inflicted on non-aggressors, on civilians. One fundamental issue rarely crops up.
  

• Jun 7, 2014 2:35 pm
  

  5 remaining problems for Thomas Piketty in the wake of the FT controversy

  by Phillip Magness

  In the past few days Thomas Piketty and a number of his less scrupulous defenders have taken to declaring the data dispute around Capital in the 21st Century a settled matter since the publication of Piketty’s retort to Chris Giles of the Financial Times.
  

• Jun 6, 2014 7:15 pm
  

  Why the U.S. is Stuck With a Subpar Economy

  by Robert Higgs

  Making sense of economic fluctuations can be a daunting task. The economy comprises a gigantic set of interrelated assets, inputs, processes, transactions, and outputs, and its dimensions can be and have been measured in countless ways.