Pharmaceuticals, AI Make Growing Old Great Again
How to get rich? The single best way is to live a long time, ideally working much of that time while amassing savings that compound, and compound some more. The vast majority of Warren Buffett’s…
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Essays
Writing by John Tamny and Parkview contributors, from the latest commentary to the collected archive.
1053 essays · Newest first
Clear filtersGreg Mankiw’s Solutions Are the Path To Much More Federal Debt
The federal debt will soar in the coming decades. The previous truth can be found in the monolithic nature of the proposed debt solutions. Harvard’s Greg Mankiw is hardly alone in saying posssible…
Federal Reserves ‘Interest On Reserves’ Doesn’t Limit Inflation
The difference between what economists believe and what’s true is Pacific Ocean vast. Think the popular view that the Federal Reserve, by paying banks to park reserves at the central bank, is…
When the U.S. Takes a Break From Reality, Millions Don’t Eat
“Recession” is a relative concept. For instance, when the U.S. economy contracts such that Americans merely tighten their belts, hundreds of millions around the world face starvation. If you doubt…
Trump Should Have Fired the BLS Because It’s Unnecessary, Not Just Wrong
Of course the Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) is wrong about levels of employment or lack thereof. How could it be right? Precisely because employment figures are valuable within the broad…
Taxation Is Easily the Least Harmful Aspect of Government Spending
Taxes are routinely awful, and annually unearth dread in all of us as we cower before Congress’s outsourced tax collector (the IRS). We do so while trying to grasp the meaning of a tax code that…
Why Would Kevin Warsh Shrink Himself To Get Back to the Fed?
Kevin Warsh is married to the daughter of Ronald Lauder, the cosmetics billionaire. Warsh himself earns enormous sums on the speaking circuit, he’s got a top designation at one of the world’s most…
Luckin’s Arrival In the U.S. Is Bad News For the Birthrate-Obsessed
Human beings are inputs, but birthrates don’t matter. The latter is evidence that two seemingly opposing ideas can be true at the same time. Economists and politicians fear falling birthrates. Near…
The Fed Isn’t What John Cochrane Wants It to Be, Never Was
The Fed’s mandates are rooted in endless fallacy, most prominently the discredited Phillips Curve which says economic growth causes prices to rise. Please keep this in mind as monetary policy…
Beware the Pundits Who Think They Speak For Us
“We are living in a moment of existential dread and alienation caused by the savagery of social media, the ugliness of our politics, the AI takeover, our melting planet, a winner-take-all economy…”…
Book Review: Salvatore Basile’s “Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything”
I was living at 537 W. Deming in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago in the summer of 1995. The address and city rate mention because that summer Chicago suffered one of those brutal and nationally…
A Worthless Number (GDP) Rises Not Due to Growth, But Because It’s Worthless
GDP is a worthless calculation. It goes down as imports increase, it goes up as government spending does, and it increases not due to productivity, but if production of any kind has happened. In…
No, Jerome Powell Is Not the Hero of Today’s Economy
Silicon Valley VC legend Don Valentine purchased a 33% stake in Cisco decades ago for $2.5 million. Cisco is one of the many great investments made by the VCs at Sequoia Capital, and it’s worth…
Replying to Michael Munger Replying to John Tamny On SALT, Debt
Responding to me, Duke professor Michael Munger writes that, “If the real hawks like John Tamny get their way [full SALT deduction], with the cap going up to $100,000 or more, the loss in tax revenue…
The Fatal Conceit of National Debt “Hawkery”
“First, and most obviously, the U.S. government’s fiscal situation is very bad, getting worse, and driven mainly by unsustainable entitlement programs that grow faster than the economy and inflation,…
Forced Foreign Investment Is the Most Embarrassing Aspect of Trump’s Trade Deals
Americans don’t require their government to secure them investment. The world lines up to invest in U.S. genius not because presidents or Commerce Departments enter deals with other countries, but…
Ben Bernanke & Janet Yellen’s Inflation Mystification Ails Fed
Fed officials don’t grasp what inflation is. If they understood what it is, they wouldn’t be so worried about the Fed’s so-called independence. For background, contemplate a recent New York Times…
Americans Don’t Hate Immigrants, They Hate Central Planning
Americans loathe lines. See their disdain for the gasoline lines of the 1970s, and that were an effect of price controls naively meant to contain the cruel effects of a devalued dollar. What’s funny…
Book Review: Simon Kuper’s “Impossible City: Paris In the 21st Century”
I’ve never been a fan of Paris. To read about Paris is to read about its beauty, charm and sophistication, but when I first visited in 1998, it struck me as rundown, dirty, and way too touristy.…
$100,000+ State Retirees In Illinois Speak to the Urgency of a SALT Credit
The Illinois Policy Institute’s Brad Weisentein wrote at RealClearMarkets last week that there are at least 32,000 former government workers in the state of Illinois who can claim $100,000+ income…
Soaring Wealth Inequality Is the Greatest Retirement Gift of All
Nvidia’s valuation reached the $4 trillion mark recently, and co-founder Jensen Huang’s shares are now worth something like $143 billion. Present and future retirees should rejoice the rapidly…
Without Billionaires, There Would Be No Medicare and No Debt
Do Bagladesh, Haiti and Peru have Medicare-style programs soon to cost $1 trillion annually? Hopefully the question quickly answers itself. Ideally it also answers Washington Post columnist Catherine…
Hassett Wants To Be Fed Chair. That Is What’s So Dangerous
In his classic book Lombard Street, 19th century financial writer Walter Bagehot observed that due to the unwarranted prestige attached to central banks, posts within tend “to be desired by vain men,…
Jerome Powell’s Critics and Supporters Alike Beclown Themselves
Remember “costless” credit? Neither do I, neither do you the reader, neither does Elon Musk. As Walter Isaacson’s biography of the world’s richest man makes very apparent, Musk was so desperate for…