Author: Gary North

Everybody has a scheme for reducing the federal deficit. Here is my plan. Because the present value of the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare is now in excess of $200 trillion, there is nothing relevant that could be done by the federal government to increase revenues sufficient to avoid the great default. In short, forget about it. There is going to be a great default. I would like to take steps today to reduce my vulnerability to the great default. I think you should, too. So, here is my plan. The U.S. government can sell assets. The assets … Continue reading →

On Saturday, September 19, I will post the Conclusion of my book, Christian Economics in One Lesson. I started this project in late March. It took Hazlitt six weeks to write Economics in One Lesson in early 1946. If he devoted 40 hours a week, that would have been about 240 hours. It took me under 100 hours to write my book. I had the advantage of having access to all of his book, and I also had the advantage of 69 years of materials that have been published since the time that he wrote his book. An enormous amount … Continue reading →

This is my re-working of Henry Hazlitt’s book, Economics in One Lesson (1946). He was a friend of mine. It was late in his career, and it was early in mine. He was always upbeat. He was always learning. I like to think that he would have approved of my book. It targets an audience very different from his: Christians who are interested in both economics and ethics. His audience initially was initially readers of hisNew York Times column. But that did not work out. Before the year ended, Hazlitt left the New York Times because of his opposition to the … Continue reading →

NBC’s Today ran this as its lead story that morning. Liberal journalists think that these headlines will pillory Trump. On the contrary, they will reinforce support from his base. It is likely that these headlines will attract independents. Basically, liberals really believe that most voters, in their heart of hearts, are liberals. These voters will therefore regard Trump’s response as — horror of horrors — insensitive. Yes, insensitive. And we know what liberals think of insensitivity. Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress and the Democrat in the White House support our troops, who are in Afghanistan. What are our troops doing there? … Continue reading →

Rick Perry has quit running for President. He said this: “When I gave my life to Christ, I said, ‘Your ways are great­er than my ways. Your will su­per­i­or to mine.’ Today I sub­mit that His will re­mains a mys­tery, but some things have be­come clear,” Perry said. “That is why today I am sus­pend­ing my cam­paign for the pres­id­ency of the United States.” He never recovered from this in 2011: Donors of $17 million should ask themselves this: What was I thinking of?” What causes could they have funded? What books could this have published? What free online K-12 … Continue reading →

Most economic statistics don’t lie, but they mislead. The statistics produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are pretty good, according to prevailing economic theory and statistical theory, but they are misleading to a fault. This is not because the government rigs the statistics. It is because objective statistics cannot deal effectively with subjective value. But subjective valuation is the essence of economic theory. This was discovered in the early 1870’s. The statisticians still have not come to grips with this development. They try hard, but the labor theory of value is wrong. They fail. Let me prove this to … Continue reading →

We have all heard about 3-D printing. A machine that costs around $1,000 can produce copies of some product, even a gun. Over the next three decades, these machines will become more powerful. They will get cheaper. Tens of millions of products will be produced in millions of basement 3-D machines, or else in small local businesses that will rent them. Each year, from now on, it will get cheaper to do this… permanently. There will be websites that offer cheap or free programs to produce millions of products. Manufacturing will move from factories to cheap machines that almost anyone … Continue reading →

In the first week of January, 1950, Harvard economist Joseph Schumpeter was completing the final edits of a manuscript which he had delivered as a speech on December 30, 1949. The title was: “The March into Socialism.” He died before he finished the editing. The article became a classic. It was reprinted in the third edition of his 1942 book: Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1950). The book has never been out of print. In his article, he argued that the success of the business class is in fact its own destruction. It had created a massive, centralized industrial structure, and … Continue reading →

Killing children is federal policy. Killing Planned Parenthood is therefore a threat to the Feds. We read: The U.S. government has warned states moving to defund women’s health group Planned Parenthood that they may be in conflict with federal law, officials said on Wednesday. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a federal agency, was in contact with officials in Louisiana and Alabama this month, said a spokesperson for the agency’s parent, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The agency warned those two states that their plans to terminate Medicaid provider agreements with Planned Parenthood may illegally restrict … Continue reading →

The medical industry learns slowly. In 1949, my physician, Francis Pottenger, put me on a diet. It had lots of red meat, extremely high-fat milk (certified raw milk), eggs, and plenty of butter. I had wheat cereal, cooked overnight. He took me off white sugar and processed foods. I suffered from chronic bronchitis. In 18 months, I got well. Basically, I have never been sick since. Today, we learn this: The saturated fats found in meat and dairy produce are not as bad for health as previously believed, a study has found. However, the scientists who conducted the research have … Continue reading →

Lew Rockwell ran my article on going to jail for not filing your tax returns. I was besieged by the victims of jailhouse lawyers who use word magic to beat the IRS. How dare I say such a thing! The IRS can be beaten by saying the magic words! One of them said these gurus are courageous. I replied: “They are fools.” He then sent my reply — no confidentiality — to his IRS-beating guru, an ex-con. I got back a letter from the guru. None of the people whose checks and filed forms in the loooonnnnng stack of links … Continue reading →

I generally like Dimitry Orlov’s outlook. He is more apocalyptic than I am, but his heart is in the right place. He thinks the West’s Establishment is the Wizard of Oz. So do I. But let us not forget that the Wizard ran Oz without opposition for quite some time. Orlov thinks we are getting close to the end of the movie, when the Wizard gets exposed. Recall that it was Toto who did it. Here is his latest article. There are times when a loud cry of “The emperor has no clothes!” can be most copacetic. And so, let … Continue reading →

A lot of leaders in the tax protest movement have done jail time for their consistency. They did what they told others to do. They are now convicted felons with no money. Some are still in jail. Irwin Schiff is one of them. He may get out in two years. He has been in jail since 2006. Are you ready to imitate him? Read this first. Trusting laymen in the tax revolt movement are often unaware of just how consistently the IRS has gained convictions. There are always exceptions, but the pattern is clear: juries normally convict. These protesters use … Continue reading →

For as long as the present economic system lumbers along, Keynesians will control the levers of power and influence. But when at last the system goes down in a heap, and central banks cannot restore the system, there will be a quest for answers. Keynesians have the long-run disadvantage of being in control of the tax-funded educational system. They are in charge of the major economic institution of our day, the Federal Reserve System. They will get blamed. When people’s retirement plans are smashed, they are going to look for somebody to blame. That means Keynesians. The Keynesians will not … Continue reading →

Remnant Review If social change came through combining old shibboleths with the latest fads, there would be a future for the Left. But that is not how social change takes place. The latest old Leftist to write a book on the end of capitalism is somebody I had never heard of: Paul Mason. His book is titled, Postcapitalism. To launch it, The Guardian, that aging warhorse of British Leftism, published his article: “The end of capitalism has begun.” This has been announced repeated by The Guardian for 80 years. [Note: the book I regard as the best autobiography I have … Continue reading →