We're In the Midst of a Dumb and Crazy Epidemic of Historic Proportions
Stupid is as stupid does. I’ve never given much thought to Forrest Gump’s mother’s astute observation. These riots in Minneapolis bring great clarity, along with the…
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Essays
Writing by John Tamny and Parkview contributors, from the latest commentary to the collected archive.
1299 essays · Newest first
Jamie Dimon Helpfully Explains How All Legislation Should Be Crafted
Those who reduce the talks at the World Economic Forum (Davos) to bloviations evidently haven’t witnessed the last two speeches by Argentina president Javier Milei, or for that matter the commentary…
Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare Protect Us From Much Worse
Experts too easily forget that “government spending” is a benign way of describing central planning of precious resources. Which means it fails repeatedly. Rich as the U.S. presently is, we’re a…
The U.S. Senate Should Play a New Tune on Ticket Prices
The snowstorm has rendered driving in DC nearly impossible. But looking at the Senate calendar, maybe that’s a good thing. If Wednesday’s hearing on concert ticket prices gets cancelled, it would…
Trump Has a Chance to Do What Reagan Wished He Had Done
A stable dollar would lift the global economy like nothing else, and would give the Trump presidency infinitely more prestige than a Nobel Peace Prize ever could… Continue reading on Forbes.
There’s Nothing Conservative About Telling People To “Get In Line”
There were “lines for everything” in the former Soviet Union. That’s what Hedrick Smith conveyed to rapt readers in his 1976 book, The Russians. As frustrated Americans endured long waits for…
Falling Prices Enable the Savings That Drive Progress
Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos can’t realistically spend all the wealth they’ve created. That’s why both epitomize progress. It’s not just that they’ve transformed how we live, it’s that their inability to…
Australia’s Youth Are Way Too Smart for Australia’s Politicians
Australia’s young people are way too smart for Australia’s politicians. See the recent implementation of Australia’s “Social Media Minimum Age Act.” The Aussie law is meant to protect youths from the…
Nosebleed Housing Prices Aren’t Signaling What the Experts Think
“The U.S. must build, baby.” The latter is the subhead to a recent opinion piece published at the right-of-center Manhattan Institute. Supposedly the easy answer to housing affordability is “build…
Keynes Doesn’t Gain Legitimacy During Downturns
The worst thing for a country’s economy is for legislators to borrow money for deficit spending during economic downturns. Too bad no one agrees, including those perhaps pre-disposed to agree. For…
With Energy, Tomorrow Is Often Another Country
The U.S. oil sector had its worst stretch under Ronald Reagan. So substantially did prices fall during his presidency that even his Vice President (George H.W. Bush) made the rather puzzling…
When It's Your Money, You Known When It's Being Stolen
Why did Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and all the great philosophers know so little about the real world? Ever heard of Eddie Levert, Sammy Strain, Frank Little, Jr., and Walter Williams? The…
Why Is Trump the Only Villain In Chair Powell’s Investigation?
Forgotten by PhD types eager to elevate their economic intelligence by denigrating Trump’s is that frequently they reveal their own limitations while explaining Trump’s… Continue reading on Forbes.
America’s Greatest Companies Tell Us the Kids Are Alright
“You don’t want to send your son there because he’ll become a communist, he’ll become a drug addict.” That’s the modern consensus about elite colleges and universities, so why pay for modern…
Data Center Potential Will Reveal Itself Unexpectedly Over Many Decades
Cable television visionary John Malone could have owned a substantial portion of AOL before it was AOL. Where it perhaps becomes more ironic is that it was Malone’s TCI that was laying the cable…
If We Don’t Want the Chinese To ‘Lap’ Us, Let Them Sell To Us
There are already flying taxis in China. There’s drone delivery of meals too. About the leaps taking place in China, some will say we need to catch up. Others will say that in addition to catching…
Mitigating the Energy Uncertainty That Saps Our Economic Health
One of Joe Biden’s biggest fibs received the least amount of attention. Back when he was president, and amid notably high gasoline prices, Biden talked of how when he was young, the price at the pump…
We Need More Stock Trading by Nancy Pelosi and Colleagues, Not Less
Leave Nancy Pelosi alone. Or at the very least, leave Pelosi alone to trade stocks. To muzzle her apparent skill when it comes to picking stocks is to blind the rest of us to crucial information. No…
Please Cliff Asness, Don’t Let Mitt Romney Off So Easily
The top 400 American taxpayers pay more in federal taxes than the bottom 70 percent of U.S. taxpayers combined. The previous truth is a friendly reply to Cliff Asness and Michael Mendelson’s recent…
Berkshire’s $358 Billion Question & the Money Multiplier Myth
The brilliant thinking of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) has been unfairly besmirched by a rather absurd “money multiplier” theory puzzlingly embraced by his more modern followers. Mises’s…
Elon Musk May Well Transform American Education Too
They thought Elon Musk was retarded. That’s what Walter Isaacson reports in his biography of Musk about the teachers at Musk’s elementary school. Musk’s response to Isaacson was “I wasn’t really…
Gargantuan ‘Big Tech’ Investment Discredits ‘Monopoly’ Alarmism
“While the music industry continues to get buffeted by technological change – here comes the AI wave, next.” That’s how media visionary John Malone describes the relentlessly changing circumstances…
If Xi Jinping Is All-Powerful, Then Why Do We Fear China?
“We thought Grease was going to be a disaster.” That’s how Barry Diller bluntly puts it in his memoirs (Who Knew) about one of the many blockbuster films that Paramount Pictures released during his…
Steve Moore and Larry Kudlow Owe Trump Straight Talk On the Dollar
A weak dollar will sap Donald Trump’s presidency like no other policy. This is something Steve Moore, a top outside economic adviser to Trump, knows well. So does Moore’s great friend, Larry Kudlow.…