It’s staple fare in opinion pages and textbooks these days that “inequality” has been on the rise in this country over the past generation. President Obama’s economic policy, for what it’s worth, has been based on this premise. The introduction to Obama’s first budget, back in 2009, went on at length: […]
A number of Americans, fancying that the world is governed mainly by economic doctrines and practices, are inclined to think that an era of international good feeling lies before us. I intend to sprinkle some drops of cold water on such hasty hopes. I have no faith in the notion that an abstract “democratic capitalism” [...]
With the present cancer of decay infecting the body politic, a virulence so debilitating that it induces complacency in the face of not only flagrantly unconstitutional acts of the national government but even of murder, it is an understatement to say that the “common good” is threatened. To deny, in the face of angular reality [...]
President Obama’s political operatives—if Vice President Joe Biden merits even that honorific—are going to the wall this campaign season on the government bailout of the automakers from a few years back. “Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive,” mouthed Biden ten days ago to a campaign throng. Obama himself wants Republican presidential candidate [...]
Wilhelm Roepke’s vision of economic and social order while offering us a “third way” forces us to choose between the path of pragmatism and pluralism on the one side, and that of loyalty to ideals that transcend the material and the utilitarian on the other side—between a capitalistic economy of fragmented special interests, technologism, and [...]
I’ve seen the gold standard blamed for a lot of things in my day—the busts of the 19th century, the travails of the farmer back when, the Great Depression—but I’d never thought I’d see the blame for the serial economic crises we’re enduring today, in 2012, hung on the gold standard. After all, isn’t the [...]
[This essay serves as the introduction to The Legacy of Wilhelm Roepke: Essays in Political Economy series by Dr. Ancil that we will be publishing on The Imaginative Conservative. The essay was originally published in 1998.] Most folks missed an important date: June 20th, which marked the fiftieth anniversary of the “German economic miracle.” It [...]
The Pro-Growth Progressive: An Economic Strategy for Shared Prosperity, by Gene Sperling The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, by Benjamin Friedman In the 1970s, the Republican Party was known by another nickname than the Grand Old Party. It was also known as “the tax collector of the welfare state.” Hard as it may be for [...]
This line was supposed to be flat. Euro-dollar exchange rate. Spain is now in recession. Greece is bracing for elections, as is France, which could unleash class warfare. Austerity, low growth rates, and debt stalk the continent. The place caught such a cold that even the United Kingdom is not immune, slipping now [...]
As NATO leaders gathered in Chicago, and as France settled in with its new socialist leadership, the word was that to get out of crisis, Europe has to choose between growth and austerity. On its face, this is a false choice. As Milton Friedman always taught, the greatest deadweight drag on economic development is government [...]
What is the set of principles behind the government’s conduct of monetary policy? It’s a hard question to answer. The Constitution gives the United States the power “to coin money” and “regulate the value thereof” and to fix exchange rates with respect to foreign coin. But clearly, the Federal Reserve has moved far beyond this [...]
Wilhelm Roepke endeavored to weave together a new view that would preserve the best of the past and the present; a vision of order which eschewed the extremes of both laissez-faire capitalism and collectivist socialism. He sought an entirely different view, a third way, which combined economic freedom with humane factors sculpted to fit the [...]
“To say that private men have nothing to do with government is to say that private men have nothing to do with their own happiness or misery; that people ought not to concern themselves whether they be naked or clothed, fed or starved, deceived or instructed, protected or destroyed.”—Marcus Cato The Elder “Didst thou forget [...]
Our mainstream media have discovered a new issue: inequality in America. The gap between the wealthiest 1 percent and the rest of the nation is wide and growing wider. This, we are told, is intolerable. This is a deformation of American democracy that must be corrected through remedial government action. What action? The rich must [...]