Author: Gary North

Ronald H. Coase’s 1960 article, “The Problem of Social Cost,” has misled more free market economists than any scholarly article ever published. It has been cited in footnotes more than any other law review article. I published my refutation in 1990. I also refuted Coase’s disciple, Gary Becker. Coase won the Nobel Prize in 1991. Becker won in 1992. This indicates my degree of influence with the Nobel committee. Coase died at the age of 102 in 2013. Coase’s article rests on a specious ethical neutrality. It also invokes a world of zero transaction costs: human omnisciece. He made the … Continue reading →

The headline was standard: Teen girls give Pa. woman black eye for ‘shushing’ them in movie theater. They broke her eye socket. But this is called a black eye in medialand’s headlines. Two loud, cursing teenagers did not know how to conduct themselves in a public place. A woman asked them to behave like civilized people. Fat chance. What they had not learned at home or in public school could not be restored in a movie theater. Nobody tells them what to do. Ever. Especially nobody white. They left the screening room, and they jumped her when she left the … Continue reading →

Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the LORD blessed him. And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great: For he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants: and the Philistines envied him. For all the wells which his father’s servants had digged in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, and filled them with earth (Genesis 26:12-15). I begin with a little-known passage in the Bible. The enemies of Abraham and his family resented … Continue reading →

Thou shalt not steal (Exodus 20:15). The Ten Commandments have ten points. The nice thing about each of them is this: it gets right to the point.Christians disagree about which point this one is. Catholics and Lutherans believe that this is the seventh commandment. Most Protestants believe it is the eighth commandment. I am in this camp. I am in the Eighth Commandment camp, but not because this is what most Protestants have always taught. I am in this camp for a very specific reason: I believe that the five points in the biblical covenant model are sequential. I believe … Continue reading →

This is a great April Fool’s story. It’s true, but the global warmers wish it were a trick. Americans are not buying the global warming story. We have had 25 years of alarms from the anti-growth hypesters, but Americans have tuned them out. “What, me worry?” Not lately. The latest Gallup poll reveals no change since 2013. The upward concern — not much — in 2014 was an anomaly.   Here is Gallup’s assessment. The results are based on Gallup’s annual Environment survey, conducted March 5-8. Gallup trends on many of these items stretch back more than two decades. Last … Continue reading →

Christian Economics in One Lesson is my reworking of Henry Hazlitt’s classic introduction to economic thought, Economics in One Lesson. That book set the standard as an introductory economics book. Nothing has come close to replacing it ever since it was first published in 1946. Why do I believe it is necessary to replace a classic? There are several reasons. First and foremost, it was written in 1946. A lot has happened since then, including the publication of Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action (1949). Second, it was written under a strict deadline. Hazlitt had been given a six-week leave of absence, … Continue reading →

On February 25, I wrote this report: Yellen Says No Rate Hikes, As I Knew She Would. Yesterday, the Dow was up 227 points at the end of the day — a swing of over 400 points. For what? For nothing. No action taken on rates. Of course there was no action taken on rates. There was no way the FED was going to raise rates. It is time to reproduce what I published on February 25. Nothing has changed. The Federal Reserve System cannot raise rates. It only pretends that it can. It cannot raise short-term T-bill rates. It … Continue reading →

Americans still think the federal government can and should solve problems. This is their default mode. At the same time, they do not think Washington is competent. This is what is sometimes called cognitive dissonance. Lack of trust is across the boards: in the presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Here are the latest findings. Americans’ confidence in all three branches of government is at or near record lows, according to a major survey that has measured attitudes on the subject for 40 years. The 2014 General Social Survey finds only 23 percent of Americans have a great deal of … Continue reading →

Greater diversity undermines oligopoly control, and liberals have based everything on oligopoly. Central banking is based on oligopoly. Entertainment is based on oligopoly. The news industry is based on oligopoly. The political structure is based on oligopoly. Now, because Internet bandwidth keeps getting cheaper, the oligopoly model is collapsing. Only in politics and education is the linear model still dominant. But it is clear that it is going to die in education. The Khan Academy is the wave of the future. So is the Ron Paul Curriculum. The bankruptcy of two private colleges last week is the canary in the … Continue reading →

Professor Lawrence Kotlikoff of Boston University testified before the Senate Budget Committee. As usual, his testimony is shocking The U.S. has a $210 trillion “fiscal gap” and “may well be in worse fiscal shape than any developed country, including Greece,” Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff told members of the Senate Budget Committee in written and oral testimony on Feb. 25.”The first point I want to get across is that our nation is broke,” Kotlikoff testified. “Our nation’s broke, and it’s not broke in 75 years or 50 years or 25 years or 10 years. It’s broke today. ”Indeed, it may … Continue reading →

I have good news. The Mises Institute has made available Henry Hazlitt’s classic book, Economics in One Lesson, free of charge. You can download it here. The book was published in 1946. This book, along with F. A. Hayek’s book, The Road to Serfdom (1944), served as the foundation of the revival of the libertarian movement in the postwar world. The Old Right had disappeared overnight on December 7, 1941. There was almost no trace of it at the end of World War II. This is why Hayek’s book and Hazlitt’s book were so important. No introductory book on economics … Continue reading →

The New Yirk Times has sounded the alarm. Word is getting out to the intellectuals. It is not getting out to the general public. Here is reality: Here is something every non-rich American family should know: The odds are that you will run out of money in retirement. On average, a typical working family in the anteroom of retirement — headed by somebody 55 to 64 years old — has only about $104,000 in retirement savings, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances. That’s not nearly enough. And the situation will only grow worse. The Center for Retirement … Continue reading →

The Federal Communications Commission is yesterday’s regulatory system. It is bureaucratic. It is slow. Think of it as a dial-up modem. Any time that you read that the FCC is about to take over the Internet, keep things in perspective. Click this: Alternatively, think of the FCC as the Post Office. It can announce new rules. These rules will apply in the United States. There are 196 nations. The FCC has zero authority in 195 of them. Each nation has different rules. Anyone can set up a website in most of them. Anyone can select the best legal location for … Continue reading →

For an organization that has a message that supposedly is able to transform the world, the American Right has certainly proven to be completely incapable of recruiting and training cadres of true believers who are willing to go out and spread the message. I was aware of this five decades ago. In my opinion, not much has changed. Yes, there have been political activists. There is a cadre of people who, for fat salaries supplied by trusting political donors, will work to get some compromising suit elected. The suit will then sell out the trusting donors. Has anything fundamental changed … Continue reading →

John Taylor Gatto is a great advocate of home schooling. Three times, he won teacher of the year in New York City. Then he won teacher of the year in New York State. Then he quit teaching. He started writing books on why tax-funded education is a disaster. He wrote a classic book on the history of America’s public schools: The Underground History of American Education. Lew Rockwell posted the chapters on his site. If you would like a free copy, chapter by chapter, click the link. Read more on archive.lewrockwell.com