Anyone who pays even passing attention to American politics is familiar with the map (Figure 1) of the United States showing states in which a majority of voters favored President Obama (colored blue) and those where Romney garnered the most votes (in red). This map conveys three dominant messages: first, that states can be meaningfully […]
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This article reprinted from The American magazine, a publication of the American Enterprise Insitute. Web address: www.american.com The Swedish political Right has increasingly managed to recapture the support of a large segment of the chattering classes. There may be lessons for the United States. Ask most Europeans or coastal Americans: “Who are smarter, liberals or […]
Read MoreThis FREE Insight is a warm recommendation of a book by WWII veteran Warren R. Higgins, The Wednesday Pen. His daughter, Ris Higgins, is a Bozeman friend. She lovingly edited this volume and it was just published by Brown books of Dallas, Texas. This is a most unusual book. It’s a collection of letters, one […]
Read MoreIntroduced by Dr. John A. Baden, PhD Here is one great truth that has stuck with me since I was an undergraduate. There is little disagreement among micro economists; their basic model is largely uncontested. This field studies the behavior of individual households and firms in making decisions on the allocation of limited resources. It examines markets and […]
Read MoreThe End of Unions? by Richard A. Epstein (Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow and member of the Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity Task Force) Defining Ideas: A Hoover Institution Journal What Michigan Governor Rick Snyder gets right and wrong about labor policy. The age of big government is now upon us. The question is how to […]
Read MoreI’m writing this on Groundhogs Day, February 2. Ramona and I are seven miles east of Ashton, Idaho near the Yellowstone Park border. YNP is an excellent place to explore parables of environmental stewardship so FREE’s work naturally features Yellowstone. Our July 15-19 conference, “Harmonizing Ecology, Prosperity, and Liberty”, will include a day in Yellowstone […]
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James Buchanan Editorial of The New York Sun | January 9, 2013 http://www.nysun.com/editorials/james-buchanan/88144 Wikipedia Commons PUBLIC CHOICE: James Buchanan, who died today at the age of 93, gave us the tools to understand the expansion of government that is taking place in our time. The death of James Buchanan takes from us the man who, […]
Read MoreIntroduction by Dr. John Baden “Trading Food for Fuel, Blood for Oil” Here is my nomination for book of the year, Thinner This Year. The authors are Chris Crowley and Jen Sacheck, Ph. D. The former is a retired attorney and 78-year-old fitness cheerleader, the later a nutritionist at Tufts University’s famous health science center, […]
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Introduced by Dr. John Baden, Chairman, FREE The first FREE Insight of 2013, “The Real Cliff”, is by Christopher DeMuth and was in The Weekly Standard on December 24, 2012. Chris explains the political logic that generated America’s huge debt and recurrent, soon to be replicated, trillion plus dollar deficits. He warns us that debt […]
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“Happy New Year” may seem an inappropriate cry as America balances on the edge of governments’ financial cliffs. We’ve been edging toward this danger for two generations. The reason is simple; politicians have strong incentives to provide current benefits and promise payments in some distant future. That future is ever closer. The politics of this […]
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