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James Ceaser is the Harry F. Byrd Professor of Politics at the University of Virginia, director of the Program for Constitutionalism and Democracy, and was a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of several books on American politics and American political thought, including...
Europe's "Social Market"
Two, three, many capitalisms
The Mismeasure of Inequality
Focus on equal opportunity, not outcomes. To listen to Lee Ohanian and Tod Lindberg, click below.
Observations from the Roundtable: Emerging Technology and the U.S. Economy
Classical approaches can work. That was the message delivered by discussants at our roundtable on the interaction of emerging technologies with the domestic economy. Education, migration, and responsive regulatory policy were all offered as examples of policies that have worked before to help the United States economy take advantage of rapid changes while mitigating their disruptions. It's tempting to frame rapid technological change as an unprecedented challenge for this country, and one requiring unprecedented forms of governance. Similar arguments were, for example, to try to deal with the unexpected inflation of the early 1970s through "new methods" such as draconian economy-wide wage and price controls. Those failed spectacularly and sent the U.S. economy on a decade-long spiral. Our discussants therefore warned against throwing out orthodox policies for untried alternatives, as the result of doing so would be to replace one set of uncertainties—the complexity of the coming change itself—with two.
The World According to Thiel
TRANSCRIPT ONLY
Peter Thiel, the cofounder of PayPal and Palantir; early investor in Facebook, LinkedIn, and SpaceX; and the founder of the Thiel Fellowship, which encourages young people to drop out of college to start their own businesses, is interviewed live on stage in front of the members of the Mont Pelerin Society.
The Roots of Democracy
Equality, inequality, and the choice of political institutions
Don Boudreaux on Coase
The Colonial Roots of American Taxation, 1607-1700
The low-tax beginnings of American prosperity
The Social Security Challenge
The Right to Private Property
If there is one really serious intellectual and cultural problem with capitalism, it stems from the lack of a sustained and widely known, let alone accepted, moral defense of the institution of private property rights.
Few doubt, in today’s world, that a society with a legal infrastructure that lacks this institution is in serious economic trouble. The failure to respect and legally protect the institution of private property—and its corollaries, such as freedom of contract and of setting the terms by the parties to the trade—has produced economic weakness across the globe. But many also believe that this institution is not founded on anything more solid than the arbitrary will of the government to grant privileges of ownership (for the latest statement of this position, see Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership [Oxford University Press, 2002]).
Without a moral, prelegal defense, the institution of private property, which is the source of a great many benefits to us all, will forever remain vulnerable to the critics, starting with Karl Marx, who said that “the right of man to property is the right to enjoy his possessions and dispose of the same arbitrarily, without regard for other men, independently from society, the right of selfishness.” This essay argues that, contrary to widespread academic sentiments and impressions, the institution of private property rights fully accords with a sensible conception of human morality, indeed, rests on a solid moral foundation.
The Economic Effects of the Liability System
Liability law has two principal objectives: compensation of parties injured in accidents and deterrence of negligent behavior of potential injurers. Considerable evidence, however, suggests that the current liability system in the United States achieves neither. The system has high transaction costs and fails to compensate injured parties appropriately. There is evidence that liability pressure has distorted firms' incentives for innovation. In the health care sector, liability pressure has led to defensive medicine--precautionary treatments with minimal medical benefit administered out of fear of legal liability.
This essay summarizes recent empirical research on the economic effects of liability-reducing reforms to tort law. The strategy of this research is to compare time trends in economic outcomes from states that adopted law reforms with trends in outcomes from states that did not, controlling for other determinants of the outcomes in question. Differences in trends between the two types of states provide an estimate of the effect of the reforms.
In general, this research suggests that reductions in the level of liability improve productive efficiency. But even if these studied reforms improve efficiency, they may not improve the performance of the system in terms of the compensation goal. The essay concludes with a discussion of the potential effects of a wide range of largely untried reforms to the liability system, some advocating radical changes to the allocation of responsibility for accidental injuries, that seek to address both compensation and deterrence goals.
Welfare for the Well-Off: How Business Subsidies Fleece Taxpayers
Federal subsidies to U.S. businesses now cost American taxpayers nearly $100 billion a year. If all corporate welfare programs were eliminated, Congress would have enough money to entirely eliminate the capital gains tax and the death tax. Alternatively, Congress could cut the personal and corporate income tax by 10 percent across the board. Either of these alternatives would do far more to enhance the competitiveness of U.S. industry than the current industrial policy approach of trying to help American companies one at a time.
Federal subsidies to corporate America take many forms: direct grant payments, below-market insurance, direct loans and loan guarantees, trade protection, contracts for unneeded activities, and unjustified special interest loopholes in the tax code. Despite their promises to downsize government, congressional Republicans have retreated from any serious attempt to reduce business subsidies. The Clinton administration has routinely requested budgetary increases for corporate handouts, including the Export Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and the Commerce Department's Advanced Technology Program.
This study refutes common myths about corporate welfare programs: that they create jobs and promote growth; that they =`level the playing field=' with our foreign competitors; that they help small businesses; and that the payments are provided without regard to political considerations. The main effects of industrial policy programs are to undermine the free enterprise system and corrupt the political system. Congress should get businesses off the dole and use the savings to cut taxes, reduce the national debt or both.
The Great Society: A New History with Amity Shlaes
TRANSCRIPT ONLY
This week on Uncommon Knowledge, a conversation with author and historian Amity Shlaes on her new book, Great Society: A New History.
Uncommon Knowledge in Copenhagen: Revitalizing Democracies Around the World
AUDIO ONLY
Building an Alliance of Democracies.
Senator Portman On Why The New Tax Bill Helps The Middle Class
The Positive Effects of the New Tax Bill Are Already Being Seen.
How Big Are Russia's Foreign Exchange Reserves?
To find an answer, we need to examine monthly balance sheets of the Central Bank, the debt records of the Ministry of Finance, and the collective balance sheets of the monetary authority, which comprises jointly the Central Bank of Russia and the Ministry of Finance.
Growing Old the Hard Way: China, Russia, India
Living longer but poorer
The Inequity of the Progressive Income Tax
Class Wars: A Parable
Russia's Oil in America's Future: Policy, Pipelines, and Prospects
Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin will hold a summit at the end of September that will focus on economic and other ties between the United States and Russia. The two presidents have long recognized the central position of energy in our bilateral relations, and in that sphere, nothing is as critical as oil. Today Russia may again be the largest oil exporter in the world, but very little yet comes to the United States. Russia’s oil industry is dominated by rich and aggressive young private companies. Generally, they are eager to deal with foreigners, but despite significant state reforms they often are still inhibited by a dilapidated, state-controlled delivery system and a residue of traditional thinking and institutions. Many of Russia’s as-yet-unresolved post-Soviet prob-lems exploded in mid-2003 when the prosecutor general’s office attacked Yukos, the country’s most modernized, productive and pro-American private oil company. Thus even as Washington and American oil industry leaders actively sought alternatives to unstable sources in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, basic questions re-emerged in Russia about the privatizations of the 1990s, the security of private property, the mixing of law and politics, and the exercise of power in the Kremlin. Today Russians, with the support of American and European allies, must create conditions that will welcome the foreign funds, technology, and expertise needed to develop the critical oil industry but also to lay foundations of law and infrastructure that will help make Russia a stable member of the world community. Americans must decide how much involvement Russia can constructively absorb to promote not only short-term oil supplies but also long-term Russian development and broader U.S. foreign policy goals. Finally, the critical long-term lesson of 9/11 and other recent experiences for Americans is that even as we cultivate Russia as an ally and major source of oil, we must actively develop alternative sources of energy. In an unstable world, the United States must not forever be held hostage by other nations with their often very different cultures, institutions and interests.
Douglas Murray And His Continuing Fight Against The "Madness Of Crowds”
TRANSCRIPT ONLY
A little over 18 months ago, we interviewed author and columnist Douglas Murray about his then new book The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity. That show was one of our most-watched interviews of 2019, so we thought it was time to sit down with Douglas again and get an update on where things stand with regard to, as Douglas describes in his book, “the interpretation of the world through the lens of ‘social justice,’ ‘identity group politics’ and ‘intersectionalism’ . . . the most audacious and comprehensive effort since the end of the Cold War at creating a new ideology.”
A Strategic Flip-Flop in the Caribbean
For almost three decades the U.S. embargo of Cuba was part of America's cold war strategy against the Soviet bloc. It should have been lifted after that ‘‘war’’ ended since Castro ceased to threaten the United States and its neighbors and adopted the standard rules of international behavior. But inertia, a powerful Cuban American lobby, and misguided politicians set new demands: democracy, improved human rights, and economic reform. When Castro demurred we tightened the sanctions in 1992 and again in 1996 with the Helms-Burton Law. The United States has never committed the resources necessary to overthrow Castro, however, and the pressures we have applied have utterly failed to advance the three objectives. Worse yet, in the post–cold war world the policy and political outlook that sustain it have become a strategic liability. They promote conflict, both within Cuba—where a crisis might draw in the U.S. military—and abroad, as occurred in 1999–2000 after the arrival in Florida of the rafter boy, Elián González. They allow pressure groups to stand in the way of the policy-making process of the U.S. government. For example, the lobby manipulated wishy-washy politicians in 1998–1999 and got the president to turn down a widely supported proposal for a bipartisan commission to conduct the first comprehensive evaluation of the policy in four decades. Finally, the imperialistic Helms-Burton Law alienates allies worldwide and will poison relations between the United States and Cuba for decades to come. Castro will benefit no matter what we do, but on balance he gains more if we maintain the sanctions because they provide a scapegoat for his own repression and economic failures even as they enable him to maintain his cherished global image as the ‘‘scourge of U.S. imperialism.’’ Castro can wage a worldwide campaign against the embargo to bolster his image knowing Washington is too inflexible to change it. Indeed, whenever Washington has lightened up, Castro has tightened up and effectively prevented further improvement. Lifting sanctions need not mean establishing friendly relations with Castro—which he would reject in any event—or supporting his efforts to get international aid without meeting standard requirements. The ultimate responsibility for maintaining this antiquated and potentially dangerous policy falls on politicians who either do not understand the need for, or for political reasons are afraid to support, a new policy to benefit both Americans and Cubans in the post–cold war world.