ChrisBanescu.com

by James E. Miller – In a recent National Public Radio report, the real story behind the monumental land reforms which transformed the communist dystopia of China into a productive powerhouse was revealed. In 1978, the farmers in a small Chinese village called Xiaogang gathered in a mud hut to sign a secret contract. They [...]

by Tom McClintock – The government’s continuing failure to address our nation’s gut-wrenching unemployment stems from a fundamental disagreement over how jobs are created in the first place. We are now in the third year of policies predicated on the assumption that government spending creates jobs. We have squandered three years and trillions of dollars [...]

by Ryan Ellis – If there’s a common denominator in tax reform and economic growth packages, it’s this: the corporate rate is too high, and needs to come down for the sake of keeping our employers competitive internationally. Even most on the Left have accepted this. The most common tax-rate target is 25%. Because of [...]

by Chris Banescu – Warren Buffett and President Obama claim that the rich do not pay enough taxes. They both blame the American tax code of being unfair and coddling the rich. Both have been pushing the same class-warfare narrative for many years, using current US capital gains and dividends taxation rates as evidence for [...]

by Ron Ross – It’s now clear that the federal government’s massive stimulus spending has not achieved its objectives. Why hasn’t it? It’s important that we have answers to that question. The stimulus was premised on the economic model known as Keynesianism: the intellectual legacy of the late English economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynesianism doesn’t [...]

America is in grave danger. Our government’s out-of-control spending and our politicians’ refusal to implement meaningful budget reforms are leading us towards a fiscal crisis that can undermine our very way of life. We are spending ourselves into oblivion. With each passing day, we are $5 billion in deficit spending closer to the edge of [...]

Conservatives warned about it, economists predicted it, and now it’s here. Inflation has arrived and it’s taking off like a rocket. IBD reports that wholesale prices, often a precursor to consumer prices, rose at an yearly rate of 8% in February. The story warns: “Food prices today are the highest on record, rising at double-digit [...]

by Steve McCann – Economic despair reigns in America, as stagnation and mounting debt make our future look hopeless. Yet America is uniquely positioned to rebound and recover our economic preeminence. All that is necessary is a political decision to reverse our energy policy and stimulate domestic production of hydrocarbons. From that would flow a [...]

by Chuck Colson – At the recently concluded meeting of the American Economic Association, the most contentious issue had nothing to do with economics, per se. It wasn’t about “the economics of the organic food system,” or “the costs and benefits of pollution control,” as two of the seminars were labeled. No, the behavior drawing [...]

9/13/2010 – Larrey Anderson – I know logical lunacy when I see it. I may not be an economist, but as one trained in logic as a philosopher, I have been horrified by the recent economic policies of both Presidents G.W. Bush and B.H. Obama. Let’s start with Bush and the first TARP bill. My [...]

8/23/2010 – Jeffrey Folks – During the same week in which the president was vacationing in a $50,000-per-night home in Martha’s Vineyard, half a million Americans were standing in line, waiting their turn to apply for unemployment benefits. Those benefits are about $400 a week, not enough to put food on the table, pay the [...]

America’s economic situation needs an emergency heart transplant, but Obama and the Democrats keep offering band-aids instead. We need a major change in government economic, tax, and fiscal policies not more government bailouts. Yet the president is doing nothing to reverse the enormous uncertainty fostered by his own administration’s aggressive anti-business and pro high-tax initiatives [...]

8/16/2010 – Henry Oliner – John Galt is the mysterious hero lurking in the background in Ayn Rand’s infamous novel, Atlas Shrugged. He is the industrialist who went into hiding and led a strike of producers fed up with the physical and moral encroachment from a government of moral supremacists who rationalized theft with childish [...]

From the archived pages of Imprimis, the monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College, President Ronald Reagan reminds us that economic freedom is an absolute necessity not only for political freedom, but for all freedom. That freedom must be fought for and protected in every generation. That the business community must join this fight and not [...]

In what can only be described as a partisan, pro-Obama puff piece, The New York Times has now proclaimed on its Economix Blog that tax increases are the best way to “stimulate” our economy and help America reach “fiscal sustainability”: The single biggest step our government could take this year to address the structural deficit [...]

8/6/2010 – Vasko Kohlmayer – Nothing can save our financial system in the long run. It is doomed to collapse. This is inevitable, because our government controls and manages its very foundation — the dollar. The federal government began its takeover of the dollar in 1913 when it established the Federal Reserve Banking System. Prior [...]

7/24/2010 – Henry Oliner – Karl Marx understood that capitalism is intrinsically productive but saw an inherent unfairness in any value other than that provided by labor. Marx also understood that individual incentives to produce would inevitably lead to overproduction and painful contractions. To avoid these contractions and their impact on labor costs, he believed [...]

6/8/2010 – Robert Frank – In his Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday, famed supply-sider Arthur Laffer argues that higher taxes on the wealthy rarely work because the wealthy simply shift their income. President Obama’s upcoming tax increases, he says, are encouraging the wealthy to take cash and income off the table this year, robbing from [...]

6/9/2010 – John Stossel – America’s current struggles notwithstanding, life here is pretty good. We have a standard of living that’s the envy of most of the world. Why did that happen? Prosperity isn’t the norm. Throughout history and throughout the world, poverty has been the norm. Most of the world still lives in dire [...]

Across America 15 million Americans are still out of work and unable to find jobs. The latest numbers from the Labor Department indicate that only 41,000 private sector jobs were created last month. Of the 431,000 new jobs added in May, 411,000 were temporary census workers hired by the government. Despite Obama’s assertion, made just [...]

The socialist policies implemented by the Obama administration and the Democrat leadership undermine America’s economic prosperity and prolong the misery for millions of companies and workers. Despite passing multi-trillion dollar government tax and spend initiatives, numerous bailouts of failed businesses, and repeated extensions of government benefits, Americans are suffering and the economy is languishing. Nationwide [...]

5/10/2010 – Robert J. Samuelson – What we’re seeing in Greece is the death spiral of the welfare state. This isn’t Greece’s problem alone, and that’s why its crisis has rattled global stock markets and threatens economic recovery. Virtually every advanced nation, including the United States, faces the same prospect. Aging populations have been promised [...]

With the national unemployment rate at 9.7%, there are now 14.9 million jobless American workers. This is the highest number ever recorded since the 1950s. Some American workers have been collecting unemployment payments for as long as 99 weeks. This situation was made possible by the multiple extensions of the unemployment insurance program passed by [...]

Yet another travesty is unfolding before our eyes in these United States of America. While tens of millions of Americans continue to struggle through difficult economic conditions, with hundreds of thousands more losing their jobs every month, tens of thousands more losing their homes and their businesses, and millions more facing salary cuts and pay [...]

Amazon.com | by Nicole Gelinas | 2009 Robust financial markets support capitalism, they don’t imperil it. But in 2008, Washington policymakers were compelled to replace private risk-takers in the financial system with government capital so that money and credit flows wouldn’t stop, precipitating a depression. Washington’s actions weren’t the start of government distortions in the [...]