Don't Be Ridiculous, No One Will Starve Without SNAP
Remember Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life ? I love that guy. In fact, I have a portrait of him hanging over the fireplace in my study. He uttered one of the great lines in…
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Essays
Writing by John Tamny and Parkview contributors, from the latest commentary to the collected archive.
1299 essays · Newest first
In Retirement, Do You Prefer Exposure to Dollars or People?
“Rather than investing in buildings, I want to invest in the people working in the buildings.” That’s a paraphrase of investor David Bahnsen. Bahnsen’s comment comes to mind when thinking about…
Would-Be Fed Appointees Vivify the Independence Myth
In a recent Wall Street Journal opinon piece, the historically market-oriented Hoover Institution senior fellow John Cochrane argued that “Trump’s Monetary Policy Desires Aren’t Crazy.” As part of…
Industry and Self-Reliant Ingenuity Will Create Much Better Schools
Karl Marx was a visionary, but his vision was not based on objective reality. Your author, the eminent and all-knowing Rob Smith—soothsaying sage and cosmic psychic—is also a…
Wall Street, China Trample On Dollarization & Federal Reserve
“Chinese companies are pushing across the globe to conquer new markets, and U.S. financiers are making a mint by helping them.” That’s how the Wall Street Journal’s Rory Jones reported it in a recent…
Isn’t a Biased, Left-Wing Media Evidence of Markets at Work?
Writing about the individuals who hold the “commanding heights of news” earlier this week at the Wall Street Journal, the excellent Gerard Baker described them as having a “philosophical outlook”…
No Matter What, China’s “Rare Earths” Will Flow to the United States
Rubber was oil before oil. As Edmund Morris wrote in his biography of Thomas Edison, in the early parts of the 20th century rubber was arguably the most coveted industrial input in the world. In…
The China and U.S. Birthrate “Crisis” Is Much Ado About Nothing
As reported in The Deficit Delusion, Sam Altman and other Silicon Valley giants are in the midst of a bet. It concerns not if, but when the first one-man “unicorn” will reveal itself. Altman and…
Gas-Powered Cars Would Have Crushed EVs In the ’80s and ’90s
Elon Musk is brilliant, but he also has fortunate timing. That’s because leaving technological advances aside, his electric vehicle vision likely wouldn’t have taken flight in the 1980s and 1990s.…
$37 Trillion: The Screaming Tell About the Futility of Budgetary Balance
“Those of us who call ourselves Republicans have a choice to make: We can choose to stand for our historic principles, or we can continue on the road to angry populism.” Those are the words of former…
Milei Can No More ‘Dollarize’ Than He Can Decree Happiness
“You deserve happiness.” How many times have readers heard the latter? It’s accepted wisdom, but also nonsensical. Happiness is hard. The founding fathers knew this. They decreed a right to pursue…
Dyslexia As a Metaphor For the Misery of Laziness, Genius of Inequality
“Having to get up and read in class when I couldn’t make sense of the words felt like a fate worse than death.” That’s how the late Ozzy Osbourne described life at school while growing up in…
Why Is Paul Ryan So Eager To Increase Federal Tax Revenues?
Somewhere along the way Republicans forgot that when governments take in dollars, they’re not staring lovingly at them. Each dollar represents access to resources for politicians who will direct…
Book Review: Martin Cruz Smith’s “Gorky Park”
It’s not infrequently said that Adam Smith “invented” capitalism with his publication The Wealth of Nations, but the real truth (one stressed by Matthew Hennessey in Visible Hand) is that Smith…
Falling Inflation Predicts Rising Government Spending and Debt
Total federal debt was $620 billion in 1976. Why 1976? In a recent column, Holman Jenkins referenced Jimmy Carter’s contention in a 1976 debate that “The best way to control inflation is to cut down…
Internal Error Is the Only Way China Could Surpass Us
The warning from Sen. James E. Risch (R-Idaho) was blunt: “China’s control of TikTok poses one of the greatest threats to Americans’ health, privacy, and safety. Our kids and grandkids are…
Abigail Spanberger Is Zohran Mamdani Without His Personality
Those of you from outside the Old Dominion have certainly read about the shocking statements and belief systems emanating from Abigail Spanberger, running for governor and her running mate…
To Buy Gold Is To Hide Precious Knowledge In A Coffee Can
To purchase gold isn’t much different from hiding money in the proverbial coffee can. Yes, rising gold signals a little or a lot of economic decline. The yellow metal’s upward trajectory in dollars…
ICE Raids Sanctify Layabouts at the Expense of Doers
Writing in 1984 (“Subsidizing Egos”), Thomas Sowell observed how “thousands of poorly educated Mexicans cross the border every week and go right to work.” Sowell went on to ask how “people new to the…
Sorry Keynesians, Housing Has Nothing To Do With Economic Growth
Writing at the New York Times, economist Rebecca Patterson confidently asserted that “Housing is the foundation of the economy. Homes represent the single largest asset for most Americans. They are a…
What baseball teaches us about transportation
Major League Baseball stepped into the future with its recent announcement that “robotic umpires” will be introduced next season. Under MLB’s new Automated Ball-Strike challenge system, teams will…
The Public School vs. Private School Education Fallacy
It’s easy to forget that right into the 1990s, Sears was viewed as a blue chip retailer. In the year 2000, it’s worth remembering that GE was the world’s most valuable company, Enron the smartest,…
If They Offer ‘Rewards’ For Deposited Stablecoins, Aren’t They Banks?
Private money will eventually replace fiat, government money. The reason is simple: Inflation (meaning currency devaluation) is a brand risk, and a private business would never be so foolish as to…
The Markets Keep Telling Us the National Debt Is the Easy Part
The deepest markets in the world continue to tell us that paying off the $37 trillion national debt will be the easy part, but budget experts are arguably missing the message. Think the Cato…