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Writing by John Tamny and Parkview contributors, from the latest commentary to the collected archive.
993 essays · Newest first
Clear filtersElon 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.…
“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…
“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…
“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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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 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…
“You should expect a bunch of economists to wring their hands and say ‘This is so crazy. It’s so reckless’ or whatever.” Those are the words of Open AI CEO Sam Altman as he explains the expected…
While agreeing with Javier Milei’s reforms, this opinion piece asks if he got the order wrong. Up front, what’s not to like about Milei firing tens of thousands of government workers, his shuttering…
While conservatives rightly talk up free markets and freedom to choose, their analysis of how the world works frequently tramples on their rhetoric. See their endless crisis-mongering about low U.S.…
Social Security is not going bankrupt, and that’s the problem. It means the politics don’t work for Republicans to pursue Social Security choice. As for the Democrats, what the Republicans can’t do…
There was no forgotten, downtrodden, so-called “Trump voter.” The latter was a creation of media members trying, and failing to understand the “exotics” outside the big coastal cities, and who voted…
No act of federal spending restraint will ever shrink the federal government. That’s because spending cuts ignore what’s enabling the relentless growth of federal government: humongous federal tax…
The length of the foot doesn’t decline if the number of foot rulers produced exceeds demand for foot rulers. That’s because the foot is a measure, a fixed concept of length, nothing else. It’s…
Perhaps Javier Milei’s economic reform program has been oversold by Milei, along with myriad free-market proponents in the United States. That’s not a dig at free markets. It’s just a comment that if…
Products buy products. If this basic truth were understood, a lot of awful legislation and rulemaking could be avoided. Which is why it’s important to press on the point. When you walk into a small…
“I’ve just come from seeing a dead boy – and you killed him.” Those were the words of writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin (1924-1987) from a long-ago television appearance. Years after,…
