A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center gauges the opinion among citizens of various countries of the free market. They were asked if they agreed that under such a system the majority is better off even though some are rich and some are poor. The results invite interesting conclusions.
People in emerging countries have more faith in the market than those in developed societies. Among the latter, between... (more)
Even though Kanchan Singh is a born optimist, there were moments when she thought her dream of starting Washington, DC's first cat cafe would never get its paws off the ground.
Singh, 24, got the idea for her first business venture while backpacking in Thailand. Walking among the temples and medieval city walls in the city of Chiang Mai, Singh s... (more)
With the temperature in Washington, D.C. in the mid-90s, it is perhaps worthwhile to recall what life was like before the arrival of air-conditioning. Below are a few excerpts from a New Yorker essay about air conditioning penned by the great Arthur Miller in 1998:
Exactly what year it was I can no longer recall--probably 1927 or '28--there was an extraordinarily hot September, w
The job-threatening rise of the machines is an economically illiterate meme that refuses to die. We’re actually probably in the early stages of it, a bull-market in neo-luddism, if you will. Bastiat’s “Candlemakers Petititon” answered this one long ago, but today I’ll run a little thought experiment that owes it all to good old Bastiat.
Let’s say Weird Al Yankovic invents a machine ca... (more)
Most Americans are deathly afraid to go to the hospital these days – and it is because of the immense pain that it will cause to their wallets. If you want to get on a path that will lead you to bankruptcy, just start going to the hospital a lot. In America today, hospitals and doctors are blatantly ripping us off and they aren’t making any apologies for it. As you will read about below, some hospitals mark up treatments by 1,000 percent. In o... (more)
With Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison to make an example of him in the new online version of our nation's drug wars, it raises a similar question to the one in the offline world: does this kind of thing have any impact at all? The Economist has a chart suggesting that nothing at all is changing and demand creates supply, as the number of drug listing... (more)
There are a series of big important lawsuits currently under way, exploring the question of whether or not drivers for ride hailing services like Uber and Lyft are "employees" or "contractors." It seems fairly obvious that they should be contractors -- they use their own equipment, they set their own schedules,... (more)
