The United States Is a Colonial Empire, and an Extremely Successful One
2024-01-26
For those who remember their high school textbooks, the issue of America’s imperial history is very clear cut. American imperialism, the textbooks told us, was that fairly brief period in American history that lasted from 1898 to 1945. This was the period during which the United States acquired a number of overseas territories, including the Philippines and Puerto Rico, among others. The era of imperialism, we are told, ended in 1945 when the Philippines was finally granted full independence from Washington. Even more dubious—the textbook writers tell us—is the idea that the US is or has been a colonial empire. After all, American citizens did not set up any colonies in the Philippines or in Puerto Rico in the way that British migrants populated Virginia or New England.
For those familiar
The Next Austrian School Renaissance
2024-01-26
Having recently completed forty-one years as a university economics professor I am convinced that books like Human Action in particular, and the Austrian School in general, are more needed than ever if Western civilization is to be saved from the onslaught by the current generation of “cultural” Marxist totalitarians. All socialists, Mises wrote in Socialism, are first and foremost “destructionists” who want to destroy the existing institutions of society first, then proceed to create their never-defined utopian fantasy world. They are succeeding and must be stopped. Only the power of superior ideas can stop them.
As for the role of economics, several fairly recent incidents stand out in my mind as examples of what “mainstream” economics has been teaching. One is when a senior economics
Rethinking Keynesian Theory: Debunking Interest Rates and Inflation Myths
2024-01-23
In the realm of macroeconomics, a legion of PhD economists in central banks passionately contends that interest rates are a pivotal policy tool for managing the economy. Simultaneously, these economists firmly uphold that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is an accurate gauge for measuring inflation—a widespread acceptance of this CPI as a valuable metric.
The current theoretical state of macroeconomics should be classified as negative knowledge, akin to asserting that the earth is flat. One should have a better understanding of macroeconomics before delving into the topic.
John Maynard Keynes is to blame for this massive loss of knowledge in macroeconomics. He singlehandedly set macroeconomic theory back to the Stone Age. According to Keynes, interest rates are determined by the supply and