Social Insecurity: It’s Not Wrong to be Concerned about Facts
2024-02-07
A December 19, 2023, article by Brett Arends on MarketWatch caught my eye with the oh-so-clickable title of “This Is the Scariest Number for Social Security.” Given the fact that many corporate media articles today focus on pointing out to the rubes how their senses are wrong and, gosh golly, everything is just peachy, it did not shock me to learn that Mr. Arends was not referring to the program’s unfunded liabilities or the projected depletion of the trust fund. No, Mr. Arends contends that the real problem is the dragooned citizens who foolishly worry about Social Security’s solvency—and the “quiet effort” to rabble-rouse:
The scariest number may be 71%. That astonishing figure, from a new poll, is how many have been persuaded that cuts to Social Security—potentially deep cuts—are either
How Carl Menger and the Austrians Helped to Steer Economic Theory in the Right Direction
2024-02-03
Adam Smith, in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations, stipulates the guiding principles of classical economic orthodoxy, establishing guiding principles that will guide the English economic paradigm. Despite a tradition more focused on Colbertism (between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) and physiocracy (from the eighteenth century onwards), classical economics managed to penetrate this French academic environment due to names such as Jean-Baptiste Say and Anne Robert Jacques Turgot.
In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith presents a comprehensive analysis of the principles of economics, outlining the foundations of economic liberalism and providing a conceptual structure of political economy that will influence the advent of several currents (outside the classical paradigm), which use