Economics

April 12, 2016

Are We Better Off If We Buy Local?

Does spending more money locally keep money in the community, creating jobs and improving the economic situation of our immediate neighbors? Probably not. Economist Don Boudreaux shows that if we bought everything because it was “local” (rather than because it was the best product or service) we would just be voluntarily making ourselves poorer. Continue Reading...

April 08, 2016

A Simple Tool for Measuring Economic Well-Being

Is the average American better off today economically than they were 4 years ago? What about 40 years ago? How would you go about answering those questions? In this video economist Alex Tabarrok explains the difference between nominal and real GDP and shows us a simple tool that can help us determine if our economic well-being as a nation is increasing or decreasing. Continue Reading...

April 04, 2016

Why Edmund Burke Supported Free Trade

The Republican Party is fracturing on the topic of trade. Alas, in the same corners where free and open exchange was once embraced as a propeller for economic growth and dynamism, protectionism is starting to stick. Continue Reading...

March 30, 2016

10 Things You Should Know About the Minimum Wage Debate

Since 1938, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the first federal minimum wage in the U.S., a debate has raged about whether wage floors help or hurt workers. But thanks to a radical economic experiment in California, we may be only a few years away from having a definitive answer. Continue Reading...

March 29, 2016

What Hamburgers (and the Division of Labor) Can Teach Us about Prosperity

A simple example of hamburgers being made at home versus at a restaurant can help illuminate the explosion of prosperity since the Industrial Revolution, says Don Boudreaux in this Marginal Revolution University video. Continue Reading...

March 23, 2016

Work Is Not About You: How Theology Can Save Us from Trade Protectionism

It’s become rather predictable to hear progressives promote protectionist rhetoric on trade and globalization. What’s surprising is when it spills from the lips of the leading Republican candidate. Donald Trump has made opposition to free trade a hallmark of his campaign, a hole that his competitors have been slow to exploit. Continue Reading...

March 17, 2016

How to Avoid the ‘Messiah Complex’ in Short-Term Missions

As many are beginning to realize, and as the new documentary, Poverty, Inc., details at length, the foreign aid movement has largely failed the global poor, promoting top-down solutions at the expense of bottom-up enterprises and institutions. Continue Reading...

March 09, 2016

Working for Our Neighbor: A Lutheran Approach to Vocation and Economic Life

“If you are a manual laborer, you find that the Bible has been put into your workshop, into your hand, into your heart. It teaches and preaches how you should treat your neighbor.” Continue Reading...

March 08, 2016

How American Protectionism is Like a Foreign Naval Blockade

The evening news reports there has been a complete blockade of the U.S. On the East Coast of the United States, Russian forces have instituted a naval and air blockade, similar to the one being imposed by China on our West Coast. Continue Reading...

March 07, 2016

Donald Trump and Milton Friedman Debate Free Trade

If it wasn’t for Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump would win the title of most economically illiterate presidential candidate in the short history of the twenty-first century. A prime example of why he’d earn this ignoble title is Trump’s opposition to free trade — a position which, not surprisingly, he shares with Sanders. Continue Reading...

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