When he retired from public life in 1817, James Madison turned his full attention to averting a demographic catastrophe. He foresaw a time when a majority of the population would be “without land or other equivalent property and without the means or hope of acquiring it.” I. During his presidency, Thomas Jefferson struggled to [...]
President William McKinley championed the American System: “We lead all nations in agriculture; we lead all nations in mining; we lead all nations in manufacturing. These are the trophies which we bring after twenty-nine years of a protective tariff.” A return to the American System would be a major step toward increasing prosperity and restoring [...]
The “anonymous societies”—the corporations—can never deliver what they promise; they can never bring us limited government, free markets, or private property. But most especially, they cannot overcome the division between capital and labor; that can come only by sharing in ownership, and by identifying property with responsibility. The directors of such [joint stock] companies, however, [...]
Even though President James Monroe could not fix the economy or dismiss the Missouri question, he could certainly distract the nation from its problems. In his second inaugural address, he gleefully announced a new target for American anger: The British were not allowing free trade between the United States and the English-occupied West Indies. Whatever [...]
It is the perennial task of the conservative to disentangle the truth from the weeds of confusion which keep growing up around it. Samuel Francis and Patrick Buchanan have greatly contributed to the present resurgence of conservative elements rising up in America. Whatever political victories may come of their work should certainly be celebrated. “Go [...]
Adam Smith, the father of the discipline we now refer to as economics, was a moral and political philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and contemporary and acquaintance of Edmund Burke. Long heralded as a proponent of self-regulating markets, limited government, and free-market “capitalism,” Smith is often invoked by proponents of corporate capitalism as an archetype [...]
The contributors to “Wealth, Poverty, and Human Destiny” underscore the truth that liberal intellectuals who foster the illusions that God is dead, that man is self-sufficient, are but tools in the hands of the actual dominant force: global corporations that wield economic power, power that the liberal intellectuals unwittingly serve by providing corporate advertisers in [...]
Can “free trade,” as understood by Adam Smith, bring peace among nations? Or does it just allow the strongest nations to become imperial powers? In answering these questions, we must keep in mind that Smith was an economist and not a prophet. In all normal civilisations the trader existed and must exist. But in all [...]
The trade war has ignited debate on the merits of tariffs and the need to protect the nation’s manufacturing base. Battle lines are drawn between an exaggerated localism that stresses self-sufficiency and a bloated globalism where products transit the Earth unhindered and markets alone rule. […]
Speaking personally, I’d rather discuss many things during this joyful season of Advent than “capitalism.” And yet Matthew Summers’ recent essay “In Defense of Capitalism” for The Imaginative Conservative has prompted me to comment on the topic, albeit briefly. […]
Economics deals with statements of “is,” not of “ought.” It can tell you the consequences of particular public policies, but it cannot itself demonstrate the rightness or wrongness of such policies… Some debates on economic matters seem destined to recur in the public square. The minimum wage is one. Rent control is another. With several [...]
Calling for a moratorium on Muslim immigration “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on,” Donald Trump this week ignited a firestorm of historic proportions. As all the old hate words — xenophobe, racist, bigot — have lost their electric charge from overuse, and Mr. Trump was being called a fascist [...]
“There are significant differences between the American and European version of capitalism. The American traditionally emphasizes the need for limited government, light regulations, low taxes and maximum labour-market flexibility. Its success has been shown above all in the ability to create new jobs, in which it is consistently more successful than Europe.” — Margaret [...]
Prolonged, widespread joblessness, collapsing real estate markets, and lower economic growth are a few of the many headline issues about the economy. Recommendations range from more stimulus to denying unemployment benefits but there is little in these discussions that convinces us policymakers know what they are talking about and there is much that is misleading, [...]