From the fiscal to the familial, conservatives have the right answers. Several years ago, a business meeting took me to the home of an honest-to-God Wall Street billionaire, the first such member of that exotic caste I had ever personally encountered. The home was comfortable and well-appointed, but it was in most ways a domicile […]
Read MoreThis week’s FREE Insight is a summary of the talk that I gave yesterday (11/5/13) at Harvard and will also present at NYU Law tomorrow (11/7/13). The full paper can be found by clicking here. I find fiduciary trusts attractive arrangements for managing parks and wild lands, especially after October 1. National parks […]
Read MoreThere is only one 21st Century medical technology that has been lauded as able to save huge amounts of health care dollars. It is not the latest MRI technique, the most specialized robotic surgery or the newest cardiovascular drug. Rather, we often read and hear praise about the less glamorous Electronic Medical Record (EMR), also […]
Read MoreWe are in the middle of FREE’s last summer conference, “Boom and Bust in America”. This is the last of our summer programs. It concludes twenty-two years of programs applying economics to contentious topics. All featured the potentials of creativity and hazards of command. Soon we will begin our more focused salon series, Yellowstone […]
Read MoreDo I owe something to the beggar on the street? If so, can I discharge that obligation by writing him a check? Does he have a claim against me? If so, can he make that claim by presenting me with a bill? Is my obligation smaller if the beggar lives in another city? […]
Read MoreIntro by John Baden It is the exception that probes, not proves, the rule. I know of no logical system in which an exception to a general rule can “prove” the verity of that proposition, generality, principle, or rule. In this week’s FREE Insights, economist Michael Munger of Duke University describes an […]
Read MoreSally Satel, MD, is a resident scholar at The American Enterprise Institute and a practicing psychiatrist and lecturer at Yale’s School of Medicine. I find her research and writing consistently well crafted and insightful. Sally has lectured in FREE’s programs for federal judges and law professors and received excellent reviews. Further, she is good […]
Read MoreThe labor market is one of the most regulated markets in our economy. Minimum wage laws effectively tell teenagers they cannot work unless they can produce $7.25 an hour. When the ObamaCare mandate kicks in next year, that hurdle will climb to more than $15 an hour for many potential employees. OSHA regulations dictate what risks workers […]
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As bad as the political persecution of conservatives by the IRS is—and it is really bad—if the IRS were to replace half of its workforce with tea party members, problems would remain. Let me explain how I know this. President Obama’s announcement that Acting Commissioner Steven T. Miller would take the fall for the IRS […]
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Armen Alchian never won a Nobel Prize in economics. But no less than Friedrich Hayek said he ‘deserved’ one. In 1975, I attended a week-long conference in Connecticut at which the star attraction was Friedrich Hayek. Hayek, who had shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in economics with Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, was doing a kind […]
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