The Free-Market Populism of Javier Milei

Daniel McCarthy
May 28th, 2024 12:41 PM

Javier Milei is a rock star. The president of Argentina was, in fact, in a Rolling Stones cover band as a teen. But now he plays stadiums — like Buenos Aires’ 8,400-capacity Luna Park — as a political phenomenon, a charismatic cross between Donald Trump and Milton Friedman. Except that Milei, a former economics professor himself, is more free-market than Friedman, in theory at least.

 

Liberals Love the Minimum Wage — Though It Hurts People Liberals Love

Larry Elder
April 5th, 2024 2:41 PM

On April 1, the new California $20-per-hour minimum wage for fast-food workers went into effect. In signing the bill, California Gov. Gavin Newsom rejected the view that such a wage hike — 25% above the state’s current minimum wage — hurts teenagers who disproportionately benefit from fast-food jobs and for whom this becomes their entry into the job market. Newsom said: “That’s a romanticized…

 

Thank Milton Friedman for the Rise Support for School Choice

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
May 5th, 2023 2:53 PM

WASHINGTON — Who is buried in Grant’s Tomb? Actually, Ulysses S. Grant is buried in Grant’s Tomb, which comes as a bit of a surprise to young Americans educated in our modern educational factories, all airconditioned, with counselors on every floor and armed guards patrolling the halls. Also, there are psychiatrists on duty daily for troubled students who may have encountered a rude word in…

 

In Search of Cures for Inflation

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
April 10th, 2023 3:34 PM

WASHINGTON -- I have of late been searching vigorously through my morning newspapers for the causes of and the cures for inflation. It seems to me that most people whom I know are well aware of what causes inflation and what might be the cure for it. The cause is too much money chasing too few products. The cure for it is to restrain the growth of the money supply. The source of money is in…

 

NYTimes ‘Inequality’ Obsession Gets Comical: Rich Like Scrooge McDuck

Clay Waters
August 25th, 2019 11:15 PM
The New York Times retains its bizarre obsession with the left-wing hobbyhorse of “income inequality.” Former economics reporter Binyamin Appelbaum, who betrayed liberal viewpoints in his reporting, is now free to issue unadulterated left-wing opinions from his perch on the paper’s editorial board. His latest Sunday Review piece suggests “Blame Economists for the Mess We’re In.” It began with a…
 

The Health Care Mountain

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr.
May 3rd, 2018 8:42 PM
WASHINGTON — Milton Friedman was not only a brilliant economist — a Nobel laureate, in fact — he was also a gifted writer. In his 1962 book "Capitalism and Freedom," he presciently explained how health care costs were going to leap out of control over the next decades. Sure enough, they did. They multiplied from roughly $1 of every $20 being spent on health care in the 1950s to roughly $1 of…
 

Let’s Limit Spending

Walter E. Williams
February 7th, 2018 11:24 PM
Some people have called for a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution as a means of reining in a big-spending Congress. That's a misguided vision, for the simple reason that in any real economic sense, as opposed to an accounting sense, the federal budget is always balanced. The value of what we produced in 2017 -- our gross domestic product -- totaled about $19 trillion.
 

NYT Op-Ed Smears Public School Critics as Rooted in Racist Confederacy

Clay Waters
August 1st, 2017 3:34 PM
The New York Times ran an astonishingly ignorant op-ed on Monday by writer Katherine Stewart, using historical fallacies to smear today’s critics of public schools as rooted in racism: “What ‘Government School’ Means.” The text box got to the point: “A phrase rooted not in libertarian economics but in Confederate rage.”
 

Democrats' Spending and Power Addictions Prevent Debt Solutions

David Limbaugh
May 10th, 2011 11:08 AM
The Washington Examiner reports that it's been 768 days since the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a budget. What's the big deal? It's not like the nation is facing financial difficulties or anything. I realize it's convenient for President Obama to pretend he's a bystander on fiscal matters when it suits him and to pass the buck that never stops with him back to Congress, but how about a…
 

CNN's Romans: Unemployment Benefits Extension 'Would Not Come Out of

Mike Bates
November 5th, 2009 10:27 PM
On her segment of CNN Newsroom this morning, anchor Heidi Collins asked business correspondent Christine Romans about Senate action on extending yet again unemployment benefits:CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: You're right. And Heidi, all of those things that you mentioned are incredibly important to your money and all of them could affect you very, very near-term here. This…
 

Debunking the Myth that Government Spending Stimulates the Economy

Rich Noyes
February 1st, 2009 1:22 PM
Several years ago, the Media Research Center joined with then-Cato economist Stephen Moore (now with the Wall Street Journal) on a book “Dollars and Nonsense” debunking the news media’s top ten economic myths. First on the list was the canard that government spending and deficits stimulate the economy, a premise demolished in an essay written by the Nobel-prize winning economist Milton Friedman.…
 

NY Times Says Free Market a False Idol

Clay Waters
January 2nd, 2008 4:37 PM
 

MSM Doesn’t Care About Google’s Pro-Jihadi Censorship

Matthew Vadum
November 6th, 2007 4:41 PM
As Islamic scholar Robert Spencer can tell you, the mainstream media has barely noticed that Google, the Internet search engine giant, is now deciding for its users which ideas are acceptable and which are not. It’s never been a secret that Google leans left and won’t tolerate ideas it doesn’t agree with. The company hired global warming profiteer Al Gore as senior advisor and has a history of…