Despite gains in employment and a drop in the jobless rate in November, the labor force data released Friday were disturbing. They showed a drop of 350,000 in the number of people in the labor force, a big decline for one month and an extension of a troubling trend. Here is the bigger picture: the […]
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Introduction by John Baden: Ramona and I often are out of town on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, Election Day. Since we are likely to be gone, we are registered to receive “absentee ballots.” How easy they are; mark, sign, stuff into envelopes, put on a stamp, and we’ve done a small portion of […]
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Mitt Romney has accused the Obama administration of trying to “gut welfare reform by dropping the program’s work requirements.” That may be a slight exaggeration, but the administration’s plans do raise serious concerns. As the CEO of one of the nation’s largest workforce-development companies and the president of the think tank that developed the intellectual […]
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Social inequality could be studied objectively, but most courses are overloaded with leftist beliefs.
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Progressives: “What’s Going On?” and “Who is John Galt?” Brian Kahn’s defense of progressives is the feature of this week’s FREE Insights. Brian is a graduate of UC Berkeley and Berkeley’s law school. Like Theodore Roosevelt, Brian was a boxer in college and an enthusiastic outdoorsman. He has hosted his radio show “Home Ground” since […]
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I often told my students that Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society” published in the American Economic Review in 1945 remains the most insightful economic article ever published. I read it once a year and always learn. Anyone who understands it well knows more about the economy and society than does the average Ph.D. […]
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David Parker has done a commendable job lately of covering the impact of big money in the Tester/Rehberg race. I fully expect a variation of Gresham’s law to apply as negative ads funded by outside groups drive away a civil discussion on issues important to Montana and the west. Here is one version of how […]
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This summer FREE is hosting two seminars for seminary professors, other academics involved with religion, and federal judges. The July program will examine environmental and social justice and will include an excursion to Butte, America. What can we learn about booms, busts, and revitalization from the Butte experience? What does and can religion contribute during […]
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On the differences between Social Darwinism and laissez-faire economics. President Obama’s recent speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors signaled the opening of a political gambit in the upcoming presidential election. In dealing with the proposed budget of Representative Paul Ryan, the president sought to discredit nineteenth-century laissez-faire economics by linking that movement to […]
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The half-century between 1912 and 1962 was a period of great wars and economic tumult but also of impressive social cohesion. Marriage rates were high. Community groups connected people across class. In the half-century between 1962 and the present, America has become more prosperous, peaceful and fair, but the social fabric has deteriorated. Social trust […]
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