The average income in the most capitalist countries is six times higher, in real terms, than the average income in the least capitalist economies. More than 27 percent of people in the most socialist economies live in extreme poverty but that number is just 1.8 percent in freest economies.

What is the interagency, and why should its views guide the conduct of American diplomatic and national-security professionals? The Constitution grants the president the power to set defense and diplomatic policy. Where did this interagency come from?

Almost no one understands or appreciates the spontaneous order and emergent nature of complex economic systems. At the same time, government economic planners and progressive public policy think tanks deny it exists. It would make them irrelevant. Fortunately for enlightened civilization, Russ Roberts is hastening their irrelevance.

The root cause of the uprising is 40 years of repressive rule. The clerics’ plundering of the wealth and dignity of a nation, astronomical corruption, denial of basic freedoms, and suppression of women are over the top.

Why do so many American Progressives wish to put even larger swathes of our lives under political control given their belief that politics is so very easily corrupted by oligarchs and big-money donors?

The overall results suggest that the United States became less future-oriented beginning around 1970. This change has persisted.

It’s as if Travis Bickle, the violently disturbed Robert DeNiro character in “Taxi Driver,” had it right when he told fictional presidential candidate Sen. Charles Palantine it was “like an open sewer. It’s full of filth and scum,” and the next president “should flush it down the toilet.”

This group defended states’ rights—the very essence of federalism—against the Federalists, who would have been more accurately described as Nationalists. Nonetheless, what they predicted would be the results of the Constitution turned out to be true in most every respect.

The only way is through a deeper appreciation and love for family, church, community, and nationality. For too long, these centers of civic life that strengthen the individual and diminish the state have been neglected.

For many people in the United States, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a ho-hum events. For America's intelligentsia and their ignorati, Reagan was still a doofus B movie actor and socialism was the dominant philosophy of America's national media and universities. Josef Stalin's Great Terror was not taught in schools, and neither was Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution.

What Africans have failed to grasp about capitalism and the free market is that, it is not a system intrinsic to Western culture. It is a system intrinsic to human nature regardless of race, ethnicity, or the local culture.

The idea that price-based “standards of living” have been stagnating is just misguided. New measures of GDP would help, but the larger problem is that any purely market-focused metric will miss the ability, and in fact the desire, of human beings to cooperate in groups.

By what measure are governments getting smaller, weaker, and less involved in the daily lives of human beings? In this country, at least, this case certainly can't be made by consulting the data on government taxation and spending.

Home Depot currently employs more than 400,000. Since its inception, it has created millions of jobs. Home Depot also provided health care insurance for millions of families whose husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers have worked for the company. Home Depot's vendors, many of them small businesses that have increased in value, have also created jobs as they have grown along with the chain.

Moral and social consensus is breaking down in Western countries; and to whatever extent it is still present, it is being increasingly imposed from above. Present trends toward intrusive bureaucratic government providing “democratic” socialization will not likely be reversed in the near future.

Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom defended the individual—the only ultimate locus of choice, responsibility and morality—as the appropriate focus of efforts toward human improvement, at a time when failing to keep that focus threatened the entire world. That is a lesson we need to remember now as well.

American history has vindicated the Founders’ faith that all human beings share the same basic desire for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This universalism makes it a challenge to draw the circle of mutual loyalty among citizens in the way that most nations do. Americans are loyal to the morality and values of the Declaration Of Independence, not to common ancestors or geography.

Between 1950 and 2010, average residential electricity consumption increased 10-fold. But after that, in a shift that captured the attention of economists, government agencies and others who monitor the energy market, consumption began to decline.

The fallacies of the diversity movement that permeate all of college life is stunning, and the fees they charge for this crime are obscene. College should be a glorious opportunity for learning and inspiriation. In fact, we live in the most open and tolerant society for self-creation the world has ever known. Yet, the academic obsession with identity is ironic, since its deconstruction roots lie in a philosophy that denied the very existence of the self.

An entrepreneur is someone who organizes, manages, and…

Local prosecutors and judges are loath to initiate misdemeanor drug cases. San Francisco police officers complain that even dealers get neither jail time nor probation. Drug courts have closed in some California cities.

In keeping with my individuality, I seek to be as independent and self-reliant—a burden to no one—as my abilities allow. I will speak for myself and gladly accept responsibility for my actions. And I have rights, the only kind of rights that make any sense: individual rights.

Ultimately, strategic mergers ensure that companies can compete in rapidly changing markets both domestically and abroad. The Trump administration is constantly looking for ways to even the playing field against China. Allowing companies to take advantage of natural synergies in order to streamline costs and make them more competitive is an underutilized tool that the administration should employ more often.

There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that empathy, rather than greed, is the true driving force of capitalism. Empathy is the ability to recognize and understand another person’s feelings and motives, and this is the most important characteristic of successful entrepreneurs.

Unlike the domination of some by others suggested by dog-eat-dog imagery, the marketplace rewards those who cooperate best in providing others what they want. Market competition—the freedom to offer cooperation on terms one is willing to accept—favors those better able to serve others, however weak they may be in politics or social power.

John Scotus was the brightest star among the invading army of Irish monks (but a layman himself) who were armed only with their books. They seemed to be everywhere, and according to Charlemagne biographer and servant Einhard, "he loved the wandering monks."

The cost of these arrangements can seriously erode local budgets, drive up property taxes, and actually coincide with the layoffs of essential personnel, including police officers and firefighters

The market gives to the plumber, the pipefitter, and the political-science professor each a real and meaningful say in how his or her life proceeds. The young man who chooses to pursue a career as a physician need not persuade 51 percent of his fellow citizens to endorse his choice.

But the Democratic field’s overwhelming focus has been asset redistribution—providing free health care to all, forgiving student debt, or giving every adult an annual stipend of $12,000.These policies move America toward the no-growth welfare states of continental Europe.

The gig economy is not a traditional economic sector. Much of the reason it has been so profitable for all involved is because its model is brilliantly innovative. Now that one state has committed to essentially dismantle the gig economy, it is likely that others will follow suit.

Thanks to the rich and superrich here, electric power is a given, so is trash collection, so is drainage, and for a growing number, so is air conditioning. And Americans of all economic classes don’t have to endure the insanity-inducing agony of endless flies.

Because in our modern economy every one of us purchases from others nearly everything we use, our economy is a vast complex of middlemen. Its supply chains span the globe, and they are mind-bogglingly efficient.

Let’s at least try to give kids a taste of the free market before the crushing government bureaucracy weighs in upon them.

“How can human carbon dioxide, which is less than 5% of natural carbon dioxide, cause 30% of today’s atmospheric carbon dioxide? It can’t.”

Before 1870, only the rich could afford whale oil and candles. With the drop in the price of kerosene, working-class people all over the nation could afford the one cent an hour that it cost to light their homes at night. Working and reading became after-dark activities new to most Americans.

Opinion polls have limited predictive value. Other metrics, such as the state of the economy, may be more important than random phone calls to registered voters. Record low unemployment, particularly for women, blacks, and Hispanics and a booming economy may be a better predictor for an incumbent President's reelection prospects.

Postindustrial economies create a far more challenging path to upward mobility than the manufacturing economy of the 1930's. Education is now the most likely route to middle-class comfort and relative stability. The children of low-skilled immigrants, particularly Latinos, are struggling. Instead of climbing the income ladder, they are slipping down.

Contrast that with how the government would react if you decided to stop paying taxes because you don’t like the services it offers and provides in return. Agents of the government would descend upon you and threaten fines and imprisonment – resorting to physical assault if necessary – if you didn’t obey.

Trump talks “GO-talk” when he makes speeches about the jobs that have been lost to globalist trade policies, and when he talks about bringing manufacturing back to the USA. The globalists did great harm to the US economy by assuming that production could be shifted to low-cost labor countries while the American consumer took care of global consumption.

Given the belief that consumption is the source of output, it’s only natural that to believe government waste during the Trump years would be the cause of growth. Implicit is that Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell are better allocators of precious resources than are Peter Thiel and Jeff Bezos. That's not serious.

As economist Thomas Sowell wrote, “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

We are culture builders. And one of the tools in the toolbox is capitalism—to form our people to compete well in the market, and to execute, to have confidence in what they are doing.”

Gains in technology and food science, along with the widespread reduction in transaction and transportation costs, have enabled producers to increase quality, get better information on what consumers want, and ship those products to stores more quickly, more safely, and all year round.

This greening is good news. It means more food for insects and deer, for elephants and mice, for fish and whales. It means higher yields for farmers; indeed, the effect has probably added about $3 trillion to farm incomes over the last 30 years. So less land is needed to feed the human population and more can be spared for wildlife instead.

One comparison to Freedom's Radicals is the illiteracy, mysticism and anarchy of the Dark Ages. In the modern and postmodern eras the comparisons include the human disasters known as the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution and the Cuban Revolution. Freedom's Radicals today are creating disequilibrium in favor of peaceful human progress.

The brain can economize on its resources by adopting heuristics and rules of thumb. We know that the frequent application of some of these rules will lead to errors, but those rules can still make economic sense.

Keynesians believe government spending powers growth. No, it’s a consequence of it. Monetarists believe money creation powers economic growth. No, it’s a consequence of it. There are billions of dollars circulating in El Salador because some of the fruits of production that takes place in the U.S. are shifted down to El Salvador.

Politicians perform ostentatious displays of publicity and political activists take to social media with grand condemnations of “social injustice” because there is social currency to be gained from doing so. The rules of the game call for it. Don't expect any real action to follow.

A periodic “spring cleaning for the regulatory state” is essential if we hope to address regulatory accumulation. For starters, we need to get rid of the problem of over-licensing and over-permitting. “Permissionless innovation” should be the default.

The idea of Bitcoin inevitability does not mix well with the logic of markets. We need markets and competition precisely because as human beings we have nowhere near the information or capacity necessary to make deterministic statements about the future. The future of money will likely look nothing like any of the possibilities we currently imagine.

Legislators should not be too hasty in altering the employment status of gig economy workers unless they want to bear the responsibility of rendering the sector completely nonexistent in the process.

All jobs if well done are virtuous and bring dignity to those performing them, no matter how menial or trivial they may appear to be. All ways of making a living are of equal moral value.

The value that the Founders placed on self-reliance and entrepreneurship can be seen in the way that they lived their lives. Benjamin Franklin -- the original self-made man -- attributed his success chiefly to his own initiative. “Energy and persistence,” he wrote, “conquer all things.”

Devaluation exists as a horrid tax on investment. Why put money to work if the exchangeable value of future monetary returns - already risky in the first place - is being shrunken by monetary authorities?

Today the rigid orthodoxy of Progressive Leftism prevails in the land.  It is a noxious compound of several related tendencies and opinions, including the application of radical doubt about the nature of reality, the widespread acceptance of moral relativism, and the imposition of political correctness.

Smith’s first published book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments [1759], is a study on how we humans develop shared ideas of fairness and morality. Our morality is not derived from a divinely inspired moral sense. It is the result of a triangulation between an actor, an action, and a viewer.

To quote Adam Smith again, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest". If they know what others need in order to feel more valuable, entrepreneurs can design and offer products and services to meet that need.

What makes our values right and theirs wrong? Why should our views and values prevail? Under our Constitution, many practices are protected — abortion, blasphemy, pornography, flag-burning, trashing religious beliefs — that other nations regard as symptoms of a disintegrating society.

Last week’s disappointing jobs number, as well as major downward…

The capitalist bears the risk of potential losses. Appetite for risk is in limited supply. Most people are not willing to risk losing their own funds (or borrowed funds that they will have to repay) in the event their produced goods are not valued by consumers at a price higher than the production costs.

Pop quiz: what’s the most economically significant difference…

Countless minds and countless hands have contributed to the slow march of civilization and helped to create a modern world in which I can perform innumerable operations closed off to previous generations without thinking about them. As Russell Roberts put it, “Love locally, trade globally.” As it gets easier to do the latter, it gets easier to do the former.

All the accompanying hoopla surrounding the theory of man-made global warming or climate change in our time fails to meet the criterion of testability, such as Eddington’s expedition put to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity and, hence, the so-called science of man-made global warming might well be described as voodoo-science.

Today, Sanders rakes in $174,000 every year from serving in the upper chamber Senate. He has earned $2,248,500 in his 12 years there and had earned $2,272,500 from his 16 years in the House, so federal taxpayers have financed his life to the tune of more than $4.5 million.

At the apex of American society stands a heritage of individualism. The United States being a country founded by immigrants looking for freedom from the oppressive political regimes of Europe is a nation with a strong commitment to the values of individual responsibility, personal freedom, and belief in limited government.

But just because young people aren’t signing up in droves for socialism doesn’t mean they aren’t concerned about the future of the U.S. economic system. A 2015 poll by the Harvard Institute of Politics found that nearly half of 18- to 29-year-olds believe the American Dream is “dead” for them.

The economic and political deterioration of Venezuela has followed the pattern that Hayek described in 1944. In Chile, in contrast, free markets dispersed economic power amongst millions of Chileans and the military government, which ran the country between 1973 and 1990, gave way to democracy. Today, Chile is both economically and politically free.

Gramsci spoke of organizations including churches, charities, the media, schools, universities and “economic corporate” power as being organizations needing to be invaded by socialist thinkers.

Total spending including all stages of production more accurately reflects an economy’s actual expenditures, according to Skousen. When measuring total spending using business receipts compiled by the IRS, Skousen found that “consumption represents only about 30 percent of the economy.”

But entrepreneurship can be viewed more broadly as being enterprising: assessing the present, and taking individual action to modify it to achieve personal objectives in the future. This better future is never pre-determined, but instead the entrepreneur imagines it as a possibility and creates it step-by-step.

Each American, each American household, and each American firm has a set of goals that it pursues, and each does so by acting within the American — actually, within the global — economy. But these many attempts to fulfill individual goals are no part of a collective effort to fulfill higher goals.

Efforts to impose “more aggressive regulation of markets” – which typically amount to more confiscatory taxes and stricter government regulations – may fall short of actual socialism, but erode the defining characteristic of capitalism, namely private ownership over the means of production.

With the American system of a democratic state, humanity has found the perfect institutional framework which makes the next step in the direction of a perfect world possible; and if only the American system of democracy would take over worldwide, the way to perfection would be clear, smooth and free.

Philosophy is largely unappreciated. This is a shame, everyone has one. For most people, their philosophy is a random collection of slogans that have been acquired from popular culture. It is not grounded in rational core principles. The first tenet of our Manifesto alludes to the philosophical core our Poetic Justice Warriors profess – reason, purpose and pride.

Today's anointed - this loose class of elite media institutions, academics, and progressive politicians - continue to have the hubris to believe it is their role, with their superior vision and ideas, to rescue the victims of society’s “oppression” by imposing their collective will onto others.

Socialism is about maximizing power, not maximizing profits. Government doesn’t make profits, has no incentive to show profits, wouldn’t know a profit if it hit it in the head.

By writing books, Bernie made a lot more money than any truck driver who delivered his books to stores. He made a lot more than any factory worker who assembled the books. Does Sanders believe he took advantage of these workers?

The opposite of Democratic Socialism is not Republican Party policy, it is entrepreneurialism based on individual choice and individual action. The normal conduct of society is the continuous adaptation of individuals to each other’s needs. Socialism is, in fact, anti-social.

Victor Hugo asks, "Who set cold white panes in place of that stained glass of gorgeous hue? An architect, on the plea of good taste, amputated it." And one might also ask, what has become of the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution, the one that guarantees federalism? Our progressive masters, on the plea of the common good, amputated it.

Having subsidized the creation of a dependent socialist paradise in Europe, the U.S. now has to watch as the EU’s malign influence washes over America and other nations via international bodies, universities, nongovernmental organizations, multinational corporations and other channels.

To hear the class warriors say it, the rich aren’t paying enough. Even though the top 1 percent of earners account for nearly half of all federal tax revenues, this isn’t enough for those who live to redistribute. They want the rich to pay much, much more. Such a view is quite literally impoverishing.

We have devalued the learning value of work. In a world that has increasingly emphasized the importance of education, it would be a catastrophic failure to not celebrate the educational value of work and the ways in which school-based learning can and should enhance work opportunity and performance.

Thanks to journalism's profound and obvious hostility to the Trump administration, it has become increasingly difficult for the media to continue to claim adherence to dispassionate scientific inquiry. This departure from the scientific ideal has become more clear in the last decade.

Free market capitalism together with the drastic reduction of the state and the abolishment of politics would do away with the financial burdens that afflict the modern citizen. State intervention in economic life does not lead to prosperity. The path to affluence is the withdrawal of the state and the end of politics.

The investment into the “tools of production” not only has a longer and more sustainable effect on the livelihood of people, but it actually meets the conditions of charity in a much more profound way.

Capitalism is responsible for unprecedented levels of comfort, health, achievement, peace and personal fulfillment. All other systems are worse. And yet we are sprinting away from it. How does this happen? At first, gradually, then suddenly.

History is filled with dire warnings of this or that powerful government using extensive controls to propel its economy to a new level of wow. What history is not filed with are actual examples of economies being so propelled. Quite the opposite.

All human actions are driven by the force of entrepreneurship, which continually creates, discovers and transmits information, as it adjusts and coordinates the contradictory plans of the different individuals through competition and enables them to live and coexist in an increasingly rich and complex environment.

What the world needs is more personal freedom and economic liberty so we each may be the voluntary means to each other’s ends through the marketplace of ideas, employments, and products as we use our individual knowledge in our shared global society.

Economic growth comes from successful entrepreneurship that is also productive. And not all entrepreneurs who earn profits contribute to economic growth if they have unproductive -- or, worse, destructive -- effects on the economy.

Human nature has not changed. There will always be those who wish to rule; and to make themselves relevant, public policy think tanks and the administrative state use complexity to peddle their hopelessness.

In actual fact, the robotic automation does not eliminate jobs but repetitive rules-based tasks that require neither creativity nor humanity. Released from mindless office tasks, we will all be freed to create value through our human values and human ingenuity. We can all become entrepreneurs.

Government markets itself as the solution to the people’s problems. But the people see it as the problem – the biggest problem they face. This is a colossal marketing failure – akin to a brand-owning company like Kraft Heinz destroying the value of its brands, or a football team losing all of its games.

One of the most commonly cited arguments initially against Brexit,…

Today, socialism means projects of unusual government ambition, built on our globally shared capitalist technological and commercial base. The A380 was exactly such a project. Underwritten by massive European government subsidies, the plane was an engineering sensation. Now it’s kaput. What technological and commercial realities would its sponsors have had to overrule to assure its success?

Of course we should want everyone to be free from oppression, and of course we should want the world to be free of nuclear weapons. But we shouldn’t support the toppling of foreign governments by a power whose consistent record of disastrous regime change interventionism is established beyond a doubt.

The Poetic Justice Warrior Society exists to promote the innate talents, aspirations, and determination all human beings possess. We honor those who go before us, who inspire us with their work ethic and achievements, and who were essential in creating the lives of comfort and opportunity we enjoy today wherever capitalism is practiced. We focus on the economic way of voluntarily serving others through entrepreneurship, which is the process of converting scientific discovery into mass produced inventions that enrich the lives of everyone.

Because opinion polls do not reveal people’s constrained wants, it is illegitimate to use polls to guide government policy-making. But what are elections if not polls? In elections as in polls, no individual’s vote determines policy outcomes. Therefore, voters typically vote with less prudence and shrewdness.

Self-resourcing means examining what you know, who you know and what’s at your disposal to utilize in value creation: what knowledge, which relationships, which assets that you own, including your own thinking processes as well as productive resources like computers, phones, and software. We’ve all got immense resources at our disposal. There’s a supercomputer in every pocket, and a super idea in every mind.

If we want to maintain a free society, we have to take the money monopoly away from the government. This process has already begun and it can no longer be stopped, neither by mandate, nor by force.

Without the assurance of anonymity and independence from governments and institutions, it becomes very difficult to make the case for using a cryptocurrency over any conventional online payment system.

One of the most beneficial things anyone can do to help move humanity in a sane direction is to develop a deep, visceral understanding of and respect for the concept of sovereignty. Let this deep understanding inform your life, then let that understanding bleed out into the world.

Overall, it would appear that Germany acts as the string that keeps the bloc together and should it break, multiple challenges could surface, threatening the future of the Eurozone and the cohesion of the EU.

Human Action provided an entirely new and superb structure of correct economic methodology and theory. It is the most important book on economics of the twentieth century and quite possibly the most important book in economics, period.

The more narrowly you can define your customer, the easier it will be to understand his or her needs and deliver relative value. If you offer enough value, you can charge a high enough price to cover your associated costs. In other words, narrow is lucrative when it comes to business.

It is the entrepreneur who imagines the better future that consumers wish for, and, in the pursuit of profit, finds a way to deliver it by refreshing capital and putting it to new uses. No other system has this capability.

The bureaucrats are not as incompetent as the politicians. They will get their man, or woman. They will extract their pound of flesh, plus a fine for late payment. They will spy and surveil, they will threaten and lie in court, they will prosecute and fine. They are now our rulers.

The Yellow Vests might contain individuals with all kinds of political inclinations, but as a whole, the movement remains apolitical, and if anything, suspicious and hostile to the political class in its entirety.

After four months of debate and compromise in the 1787 sweltering heat of Independence Hall, Publius published 77 essays in New York City newspapers to sell Americans on the idea of ratifying the new Constitution. It is the most enduring achievement of the Enlightenment, and under its decentralized structure, it has proven itself to be the example for human flourishing throughout the world.

If we want to maintain a free society, we have to rebuild democracy and take the money monopoly from the government. Today, we are standing at the precipice of such a revolution. Much like the paradigm shift and massively disruptive effects of the internet in the 90s, blockchain applications and cryptocurrencies have the potential to break and rebuild the current system.

John Locke had a precise sense of what political freedom means. Natural law dictates that no one can be legitimately subject to the will of another person or group of people. Through reason, Locke proved that no one is born to serve or rule. Legitimate government protects these rights, and is created by the consent of the governed. As the Enlightenment flowered in the 18th century because of modern science and maritime trade, Locke's sense of natural law was enshrined in America's Declaration of Independence.

Let's hope government is shut down at least through 2020. This way there’s no growth in government. Congress and the White House both lose, but those of us not in government win, especially the investors and entrepreneurs who can get on with the business of creating prosperity and growth.

St. Thomas Aquinas combined the classical Greek ideal of reason with the Christian ideal of equality to usher the Catholic Church, and humanity, into the Age of Reason. Metaphorically, he invented water - what we know as the Western ideals of personal liberty, self-reliance, invention, tolerance, and limited government. The ensuing prosperity from human creativity is Poetic Justice.

The future of innovation lies squarely in the initiatives of the independent, interconnected entrepreneur. As new technologies like A.I. and global idea exchange platforms augment individual capacity, the trend towards individually ideated innovation will accelerate.

The socialist program for the U.S. would make shortages, or otherwise degrade quality, of whatever product or service is put under a public monopoly. The pace of innovation would slow, and living standards generally would be lower. These are the opportunity costs of socialism from a modern American perspective.

Ayn Rand is one of the most admired and reviled characters in 20th century literature. Her magnum opus novel, Atlas Shrugged was panned by conservatives and progressives alike, yet it had something for everyone. A strong female lead character, a pollution free motor, heroic characters, good and evil, a love story, and a thriller. It was a manifesto for Man's right to life, liberty and property - capitalism. A modern epic tale of America's Declaration of Independence, a prophecy of a dystopian future, and the recipe to avoid what actually happened to her native Russia.

The European project, the common currency and the Brussels bureaucracy will definitely not be able to sustain the blow of another exit, especially if it’s Italy that decides to leave.

"The most important period of life is from birth to age six." This quote from Maria Montessori underscores how essential it is for a young child to have engaged parents who live a life of reason, purpose, and pride. Our government schools and public universities are graduating too many future parents who have never heard of this, and eventually rely on these same schools to also act as parents. It has been going on for 50 years. It has to end.

“It can’t happen to me”, “this would never happen here” and “the government would never allow things to get that bad”, are arguably thoughts that some Venezuelans had too before the crisis spiralled out of control. In 2001, not that long ago, the country was still amongst the most prosperous nations in Latin America; or at least it appeared that way.

Chicago is proof that there is almost nothing that government entities won’t try to tax. And if you’re a Chicago resident, you might want to think twice before asking Santa for a PlayStation 4 this year, lest you have to deal with the city’s amusement tax.

According to Gallup, only 13% of people worldwide say they are engaged in their jobs - they find their work meaningful and look forward to it. Maybe this whole jobs thing might not be working too well. Innovation For Jobs (i4j) is aiming to create a new paradigm.

The whine about the wealth of the billionaire class “impoverishing millions of blue collar workers” is a total falsehood. If the common man were impoverished by the billionaires, there would be no billionaires. The shares of Microsoft, Amazon, Apple and Facebook would be in freefall to reflect the rising impoverishment of their customers and users. The common man is not only not impoverished, but is actually doing very well.

Apparently the most financially and ethically bankrupt regions of America are high-output and forward looking populations centers that deserve greater political power. The Brookings Institute is using GDP data and Bachelor Degrees to justify their attack on the US Constitution. They refuse to acknowledge that it is the American federalist system that is fundamental to peaceful human progress.

One very unequal man transformed a town and a university in ways that will pay handsome dividends for a very long time for hundreds of thousands of people. Isaac Newton surely had people like Swinney in mind when he made his “standing on the shoulders of giants” remark.

While many teens find independence through traditional entry-level jobs, like working at fast food restaurants or retail establishments, there are many opportunities for young people to become entrepreneurs even at a young age.

Capitalism might often get a bad name, but companies like MOD Pizza and many others are proving that when the free market gives back, almost everybody wins.

Barra gets it backwards. If she wants the “United States” to “lead this transformation” of passenger cars, she should be calling for the “United States” to step aside so that individuals backed by profit-hungry investors can place countless bets on the future of transportation.

Many economists make the mistake of looking at economics in terms of the collective, forgetting that the individual is the basis for which all things are possible. And that groups of people are, in reality, not a tangible unit of measurement.

Government schooling has been failing children for years. However, since it is funded through tax dollars, rather than being a product of the market, it is incredibly difficult to keep public schools, and public teachers, accountable. This is precisely why many parents have begun considering other options that are better suited to their children’s educational needs.

Hayek hoped we would reject calls for tribal loyalty - what the politicians and talking heads on TV News broadcasts have attempted to frame as "unity" - and, instead, pursue our individual ends, defined by our unique needs and life circumstances. He conceived of a system that relies on general rules of conduct, based on personal morality. But many fail to comprehend how such a system works for everyone.

Technological advances in automating work are not going to put everyone on the dole. If they were to do so, there'd be nothing in it for tech entrepreneurs.

Say invented the term "entrepreneur". He advocated for the role of the producer, because producers create markets. If we all devoted more of our energies to the production of goods and services that others find valuable, rather than to our own consumption, we'd drive the market system to even higher levels of betterment for all. "Pick Up The Torch Of Say's Law!"

What is really disturbing is not the fact that some have lower income than others, but rather that some have very little. Fortunately, this is where capitalism enters the scene. Our chart paints the spectacular reduction in global extreme poverty over the last few decades.

Each innovation increases our labor productivity, meaning we can do more work more efficiently, reaching our desired standard of living along the way. For entrepreneurs, the latest wave of automation presents new opportunities to disrupt the economy and create a brighter future for everyone.

The regulatory state goblins are canvassing the neighborhood of private interests with interesting and creative legal angles this Halloween season. And the regulators never bear any of the risks or costs of their laws and lawsuits, regardless of how inane. Their message is clear, don't invest in our regulatory targets.

Entrepreneurs expect to make mistakes. But what they don't want to do is damn their companies by making two fatal errors at the beginning of the journey. Those blunders fall into the categories of selective hearing and impulsivity.

So instead of mourning the loss of Sears, let us celebrate how lucky we are to live in a world where the market is constantly evolving and allowing consumers access to better goods and services. 

Now, every time a woman is asked to serve on a board of directors, she will wonder whether she is being chosen based on her skills, or because the company in question wants to avoid having to pay a government fine. This is not gender equality.

The Federal Reserve's sacred 2% inflation target is now supported by a 2% Fed Funds rate. Unfortunately the 2% GDP growth new normal isn't playing nice, coming in at 4%. Innovation and economic freedom are the fly in the econometric ointment.

“Someone” must be to blame for unequal distribution of incomes. Therefore, they must be punished. Their property must be involuntarily transferred to others.

Americans are more inclined to found companies than the people of other countries and are also better at turning small companies into giant ones. The U.S. was the first country to make it easy to create companies without going cap in hand to local bureaucrats who had a right to tell them what to do.

The Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess.

Pretending to use concepts of justice to limit individual achievement Is simply the ideology of socialism: to achieve total control over society because the governing elites believe it is in their power to design and determine future outcomes.

Economists should hang their heads in shame. They believe that economic growth causes inflation. Such a view isn’t serious, and is more realistically dangerous. Inflation is easily the greatest enemy of growth.

To put America back on a prosperous path that would also potentially lead to lower recidivism rates, it is imperative that we remove barriers to opportunity and reform occupational licensing laws so that those who are willing to work are able to do so.

One thing is for certain, however, no matter how many fines and regulations are instituted, the incentive to earn money overpowers the threat of government force. And Miami Beach residents are proving that the sharing economy market will not be stopped.

The federal government does not think consumers are capable of making informed decisions, or so its labeling policies would imply.

In 2016, Washington residents voted to increase the minimum wage incrementally from $9.47 an hour to $13.50 an hour by 2020. For Advent Lutheran Child Center in Spokane Valley, the minimum wage increase meant an inevitable increase in tuition costs, which has left many parents shocked and concerned.

Entrepreneurs will find ways to disrupt every industry -- it’s simply a matter of time. The lingering question is whether organizations will embrace the evolution or fight tooth and nail to avoid change. Disruption might be an inevitability, but industries that stubbornly stick to the old way of doing things are only making the process more painful.

The word entrepreneur is thrown around a lot in casual conversation. But do most of us really understand what it means?

So next time you find yourself stepping on a stray Lego left on the floor, pause before getting angry, and think about the journey that little brick has gone through to get from Billund, Denmark to the floor of our American homes. By constantly striving for excellence, utilizing specialization, and becoming creative storytellers, Lego has proven itself relevant in the digital era. 

Liberal, freedom, justice, and value add up to capitalism. This equation will easily repel another ill conceived coup spearheaded by JUST Capital, their banker Goldman Sachs, and their sanctimonious board of directors.

Any system that allows the state to determine whose life is more valuable than others should be avoided at all costs. Jim Carrey would do well to think twice before praising a socialized medicine in the future.

Sen. Bernie Sanders recently claimed that the increase in wages last year “nets out to zero” because of inflation and that “the average American worker today, despite the strong economy, is not getting ahead.” He's wrong.

Riverton, Utah just became the first city to abolish all fees associated with obtaining a business license.

The realization that the world is often quite different from what is presented in our leading newspapers and magazines is not an easy conclusion for most educated Americans to accept.

While both schooling and increased job competition with immigrants both played negligible roles, the latter playing a slightly bigger role than the former, the main culprit was the minimum wage.

Trade wars are nasty games where nobody wins and everybody loses. Trump should put a stop to this before more entrepreneurs, consumers, and charities suffer needlessly.

When personal property becomes capital, a source of income, then the obvious implication is a decentralization of capital ownership.

Successful high achievers who feel like frauds are experiencing the Impostor Syndrome. Conversely, frauds who believe themselves worthy of dominion over others are immune from this condition. In both cases, this unhealthy self-awareness can have debilitating effects on societies.

Thanks to the affordability of products like smartphones and tablets and cheap services like Netflix and iTunes, justice has been able to prevail in spite of our broken criminal justice system.

Power is a devastatingly addictive device. Once a person becomes consumed by the quest for power, individuals become nothing more than pawns to be sacrificed in the name of maintaining order and control.

Controlling the linguistic territory is the first objective toward authoritarian dominance, and it quickly worms its way into economics and finance. After all, economics is about life's values. Now, value investing has been commandeered and redefined as creating value for the future of humankind. It is a categorical imperative. It is a duty.

The best way to combat bad ideas is with good ideas. And by allowing a plethora of different opinions to be circulated on social media, you give individuals the opportunity to judge the merits of each opinion and ultimately make their own decision.

Everyone is familiar with the saying, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” Yet, as much as we have oft heard this phrase recited, few of us actually make use of this wisdom.

But by understanding the root causes of a historical crisis as severe as the Great Depression, we stand a better chance at recognizing the potential for similar events to occur today. And if we know what warning signs to look for, we also stand a better chance at preventing future economic crises from occurring altogether.