finance

How debt is shaping up to be our undoing.

Elon Musk and his fellow barons of Climate Crisis, Inc. recently got a huge boost from Pope Francis. Musk et al. say fossil fuels are causing unprecedented warming and weather disasters. The Pope agrees and says Catholics must “ask God for a positive outcome” to negotiations over another UN climate treaty.

Efforts are underway by the Taiwan government for a government led restructuring to avoid bankruptcy (Plan to stop Taiwan’s high-speed rail going bust set for review). Since opening in 2007, this privately financed and operated system has been plagued with ridership well below projections. The Taiwan experience is consistent with the research showing that ridership on high-speed rail lines has been frequently over-projected.

There have been frequent press reports that baby boomers, those born between 1945 and 1964, are abandoning the suburbs and moving “back” to the urban cores (actually most suburban residents did not move from urban cores). Virtually without exception such stories are based on anecdotes, often gathered by reporters stationed in Manhattan, downtown San Francisco or Washington or elsewhere in urban cores around the nation. Clearly, the anecdotes about boomers who move to suburbs, exurbs, or to outside major metropolitan areas are not readily accessible (and perhaps not as interesting) to the downtown media.

When Illinois became a state in 1818, the Illinois Constitution allowed the state and local taxing districts to tax property in direct proportion to its value. The property tax is…

It is often truly astonishing to me the harm done by the way the federal government was expanded well beyond its constitutional limits during the 1930’s New Deal era. One…

Want to see more people with jobs? End the minimum wage.   The problem isn’t merely that minimum wages reduce demand for workers, especially those who have little or no…

A truly free market economy is one that tends to have the “good deflation,” and we should look forward to it.

“Gold is money. Everything else is credit.” — John Pierpont Morgan

In the race to the financial bottom the State of Illinois vies nicely with several other states, including (depending on the precise year involved) California, New York, and Ohio, with…

If you’re not regularly visiting the Heartlander digital magazine, you’re missing out on some of the best work from The Heartland Institute, one of America’s most influential free-market think tanks. Heartland…

You’re a reader of this blog, so you are a part of the conversation at The Heartland Institute, one of America’s most influential free-market think tanks. The posts here reflect the exchange…

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