Category:Debt and Spending
From Natural Disasters to the Coronavirus: Why Price Gouging Laws Hurt the Most Vulnerable
April 28, 2021 | Video
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a strong effort to curtail price gouging on items such as hand sanitizer and medical face masks.
What doesn’t get said enough, however, is that forcibly restricting prices from rising above a certain threshold will not in itself influence the market conditions that drive prices up.
Price gouging encourages competition by pressuring manufacturers and distributors to increase production, which over time, would actually drive down costs. Price controls during a time of crisis, however, do nothing to address the shortage problem.
Expert Answers on the Drug War: Highlights from Prof. Jeff Miron's AMA
August 15, 2017 | Post
Last week, Professor Jeffrey Miron joined us on Reddit for an “Ask Me Anything” conversation as part of the Learn Liberty Reddit AMA Series. The conversation focused on Dr. Miron’s 30+ years of study on the effects of drug criminalization. Check out some of the highlights below. GPSBach While there seems to be an emerging consensus on […]
Reddit AMA with Professor Jeffrey Miron of Harvard University
August 4, 2017 | Post
Dr. Miron has written over 100 op-eds and several books, including Drug War Crimes: The Consequences of Prohibition (2004) and Libertarianism: from A to Z (2010).
Suffering is Venezuela’s new normal.
May 27, 2017 | Post
Venezuela is an unfolding story of the chaos resulting from government intervention in economic affairs. President Maduro faces a political crisis, and violent protests pose real threats to his desperate attempts to retain power. The economy is collapsing in front of our eyes, but the real tragedy is not the macro indicators that we read […]
The health care shell game: Why not leave health care policy to the states?
April 28, 2017 | Post
Recent arguments against cutting federal health care spending — and letting states handle insurance regulation — reveal just how unaffordable the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is.
Don't raise Uncle Sam's credit limit
April 2, 2017 | Post
Once again, the United States government is rapidly approaching a fiscal debt ceiling. After March 16, 2017, Uncle Sam is not legally allowed to borrow any more money to cover its budget deficits, unless Congress votes to raise the debt limit like it has every time in the past. Uncle Sam’s debt has been growing […]