Economics & Political Systems

The Early Church Was Not Socialist

Editor’s note: This article first appeared in Crisis Magazine. “The early church was a socialist church.” So said Rev. Raphael Warnock in 2016, four years before the citizens of Georgia elected him a U.S. senator. It’s a strange statement, least … Continue reading

Minimum Wage, Maximum Discrimination

Since the days of Adam Smith, economists have sought a set of social institutions which permit “neither dominion, nor discrimination,” to use Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan’s phrase. In this, economists are joined by all people of goodwill—including those in … Continue reading

Video – The Devil & Karl Marx with Paul Kengor

Join AIER’s Bastiat Society program in DC and Grove City College’s Institute for Faith & Freedom for a virtual event with Dr. Paul Kengor, professor of political science at Grove City College and Senior Director & Chief Academic Fellow at the college’s Institute … Continue reading

Why Fracking is a Big Issue

In my previous column, I described the “paradox of prosperity”—the strange tendency of many people who have benefited from economic advances to denounce and vilify the source of their prosperity, a sort of “bite-the-hand-that-feeds-you” phenomenon. One example of this syndrome … Continue reading

The Paradox of Prosperity

In Friedrich Hayek’s 1954 book Capitalism and the Historians, the late French philosopher and political economist Bertrand de Jouvenel noted a baffling historical trend: “Strangely enough, the fall from favor of the money-maker coincides with an increase in his social … Continue reading