goods

That socialism as an idea could survive hundreds of years — even back to the ancient world — is a tribute to the capacity of the human mind to imagine it can create that which reality will forever decline to make possible.

In this episode of The Heartland Institute’s weekly Budget & Tax News podcast, managing editor and research fellow Jesse Hathaway is joined by Cascade Policy Institute founder and senior policy analyst Steve Buckstein, to talk about Initiative Proposal 28 (IP 28), a ballot question being placed before Oregon voters in November.

In this episode of the weekly Budget & Tax News podcast, managing editor and research fellow Jesse Hathaway talks with Cato Institute policy analyst Dan Ikenson about how international trade is not a scoreboard to measure a nation’s economic success against other countries, but the best way to improve the lives of everyday Americans, and everyday people all over the world.

This time of the year, whether in good economic times or bad, is when Americans gather with their families and friends and enjoy a Thanksgiving meal together. It marks a remembrance of those early Pilgrim Fathers who crossed the uncharted ocean from Europe to make a new start in Plymouth, Massachusetts. What is less appreciated is that Thanksgiving also is a celebration of the birth of free enterprise in America.

In this episode of the Heartland Daily Podcast, managing editor Jesse Hathaway and Towson University economics lecturer Howard Baetjer talk about how free-market forces are more efficient than government regulatory boards and commissions at “regulating” the quality of consumer goods and services.

Digital goods are those delivered completely electronically, such as music or videos, downloaded books or video games. Digital services, such as job searching or resume preparation and editing, are also delivered only electronically.

The real purpose for his visit to Washington, D.C. and his address before Congress was to push for Congressional approval of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) between the U.S., Japan and 10 other nations (Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam). Meant to extend and widen trade and related commercial relationships between the participating countries, it is also been presented as a way for the U.S. to maintain his economic and political power in East Asia in the face of the rising influence of China in that part of the world.

You may not have noticed it when out buying things in the marketplace in the context of your personal budget, but according to the Wall Street Journal (April 24, 2015) the world is awash with too much stuff. We seemingly have too much of, well, almost everything: too many raw material commodities, too much capital, and too much labor. The world, claims the Journal, is suffering from global gluts.

You’ve heard the phrase “patent trolls,” yes? Certainly not a positive sounding term. I mean – trolls?How positive an image does that conjure? The Media are almost always opposed to all things good. So when they with near unanimity help promulgate a term – you need to (re)contemplate its definition.

Policy analysts and pundits alike seem to enjoy downplaying the U.S. economy’s recovery since the recession of 2008/9. It is time for them to wake up and smell the roses: The U.S. economy clearly is the dominant economy of the world. The European Union’s death rattle continues, while China is encountering a litany of unforeseen problems.

Eighty years ago, in the autumn of 1934, there appeared in English one of the most important books on money and inflation penned in the twentieth century, The Theory of Money and Creditby the Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises. Even eight decades later, it still offers the clearest analysis and understanding of booms and busts, inflations and depressions.

It is an old adage that there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics. Nowhere is this truer that in the government’s monthly Consumer Price Index (CPI) that tracks the prices for a selected “basket” of goods to determine changes in people’s cost-of-living and, therefore, the degree of price inflation in the American economy.