On Friday, Federal Judge Gary Miller declared the federal government’s policy of male-only conscription to be unconstitutional.  Miller ruled that past prohibitions on women in combat may have legally  justified the all-male policy, but since the military has integrated women into combat positions, the past policy can no longer be constitutionally justified. The ruling can …

Luxembourg citizens voted in an election last year. But as The Economist has noted, “48% of those who live there were not allowed a ballot-paper.” This is because a great many immigrants live in Luxembourg, but few of them quickly become citizens — which means few can vote. According to the Migrant Integration Policy Index …

States like Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Colorado are experiencing an influx of migrants from other states. Often, these migrants come from so-called blue states like New York, California, and Illinois — all of which are sending more people to other states than they are receiving in return. [RELATED: “Americans Continue to Flee to Low-Tax States”] …

Money supply growth slowed in January, falling to the second-lowest rate recorded since February of last year. Overall, money-supply growth remains well below the growth rates experienced from 2009 to 2016, and has fluctuated little since March of last year In January, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 3.3 percent. That was down …

It’s government — not markets — that intervene to “stimulate” ever greater amounts of spending and consumption. A healthy market economy, meanwhile, relies on both saving and spending. Original Article: “Capitalism Doesn’t Cause Consumerism — Governments Do”.

According to the most recent Census Bureau data on state-to-state migration flows, 523,000 people moved to California from other states. But at the same time, more than 661,000 Californians moved to other states. That is, on net, nearly 138,000 more people left California than moved into it from elsewhere in the US. Yet, California isn’t …

A common myth about capitalism — and its associated ideology, (classical) liberalism — is that capitalism and liberalism somehow “force” people to prefer consumption and profit maximization above all other value systems. This idea remains common among left-wing critics of liberalism like George Monbiot who maintains that liberalism essentially brainwashes people into abandoning their own …

Many people on the left regard economics as neither a science nor a principled field of study. For them, economics is just a pseudo-science invented as corporate propaganda, and people who push “free-market economics” do so because they are either evil or brainwashed by corporate masters. Original Article: “Why the Left Isn’t Convinced by Your …

If climate change effects aren’t enough to put a noticeable dent in life expectancy, then why is climate change talked about as an apocalypse? Original Article: “If Climate Change Is Killing Us, Why Is Life Expectancy Increasing?”.

Among advocates for free-market activists, I’m often told that the unconverted will embrace free-markets if only we explain to them “good economics.” But here’s the problem — these people don’t think economics is a real thing, a real science, or anything other than corporate propaganda. They think it’s something invented by wealthy people to create …

To understand the marketplace, it is not necessary to believe in the existence of a selfish, profit-maximizing human. Original Article: “The Homo Economicus Straw Man”.

According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control (“Mortality in the United States, 2017”), “Life expectancy for the U.S. population declined to 78.6 years in 2017.” If accurate, a decline in life expectancy is a cause for concern because, since the mid nineteenth century, we’ve come to expect life expectancy in Europe …

One of the central issues in the current international furor over Venezuela are claims by some foreign governments that the results of the May 2018 elections do not reflect the true preferences of the voters. For example, although Italy vetoed the proposal, the EU had been preparing to recognize the opposition party’s leader as Venezuela’s …

Back in September, foreign policy scholar Stephen Walt asked in Foreign Policy if “the emerging democratic socialists of the left, libertarians on the right, and realists in the center [could] join forces to produce a foreign policy that would command support at home and perform effectively abroad?” As a foreign policy realist, Walt has long …

Since the 1990s, it has become increasingly popular for the United States and other Western nation-states to justify new wars on the basis of “humanitarianism.” This was the case in Somalia in 1993, in the former Yugoslavia in the mid 1990s, and in Libya in 2011. Humanitarianism was also part of the justification given for …

In domestic policy, a time-honored strategy for ramming through ill-considered legislation is to insist that it is better to do something than to just stand around doing nothing. Are “too few” people earning advanced degrees? Then we are told we must increase subsidies for college tuition. Will that solve the problem? Who knows? What’s important …

Condemnations of consumerism are nearly ubiquitous in modern media and popular culture. Anyone who has seen “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” produced in 1965, knows the drill. Every time we see Charlie Brown choose an “authentic” Christmas — by buying a small, natural Christmas tree instead of a showy pink mass-produced aluminum one — we’re reminded …

The partial shutdown with the federal government has helped, perhaps more than any other recent political event, to illustrate some of the biggest problems that come with centralizing an ever-larger number of government activities within a single, centralized institution. Were the US government more decentralized, we’d not now be facing a nationwide systemic failure that …

During this partial government shutdown, it’s become nearly impossible to avoid news articles, and segments on television and radio outlining the many ways that federal employees are apparently suffering financially as a result of the partial government shutdown. The stories are very diverse in topic. Some take a “human interest story” angle, simply looking at …

Whether its CNBC, or The New York Times, or NPR, the mainstream media is clearly committed to using the current partial government shutdown to portray federal workers as beleaguered victims of the American political system. But, in all cases I’ve encountered, these reports neglect to mention that on average, civilian federal workers make 17 percent …

The Transportation Security Administration, a federal agency, is facing a no-show problem with employees, as paychecks are put on hold during the partial government shutdown. This is reportedly leading to longer lines and security problems at airports nationwide. According to CNN , Hundreds of Transportation Security Administration officers, who are required to work without paychecks …

In recent years, an entire literature has sprung up over the various uses of the word “neoliberalism.” As many have already pointed out, it is largely used as a term of derision by doctrinaire leftists against both moderate leftists and advocates for free markets. Those who use the term in a pejorative way (which is …

The federal government is in the midst of a partial “shutdown.” Don’t worry, there’s still plenty of money flowing to a great many government departments. And even those workers who experience deferred salaries during the shutdown will almost certainly get their back pay paid in full. But as always occurs during these so-called shutdowns, many …

Although some capitalists and defenders of free markets believe that Ebenezer Scrooge has much to teach us about good economics, I have long found him to be less than inspiring in this respect. Scrooge, for example, demonstrates a lamentably bad understanding of the subjective nature of value, nor does he understand the concept of psychic …

A Peru-born friend of mine complains that Christmas trees have become popular in his native country. Given that Douglas firs aren’t exactly part of the indigenous flora in Peru, the (mostly artificial) firs and pines used as Christmas trees in homes across the country strike him as incongruous with local customs and the local environment. …

Money supply growth slowed in November, falling to the lowest rate recorded since February of this year. Overall, money-supply growth remains well below the growth rates experienced from 2009 to 2016, and has fluctuated very little since March. In November, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 3.48 percent. That was down from October’s …

One of the more persistent myths about capitalism is that wealth and resources are “wasted” when spent on luxuries. At the core of this myth is the idea that when you buy, say, a $5,000 75-inch LED television, the money you spend on that item goes only to improve the life of the person who …

New York City is gearing up to tighten state controls on the curriculum at private schools for Orthodox Jews known as yeshivas. Some activists against these so-called “ultra-Orthodox” schools claim that they spend too much time on religious and cultural instruction, and too little time on more “secular” topics. The city has now taken up …

French protests over a new climate-change-inspired fuel tax highlight high costs imposed on ordinary people by climate-change policies. Original article: “French Protestors Fume over Climate Taxes and a Rising Cost of Living”.

When the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, employers hired fewer disabled workers, because they feared lawsuits. We may now be seeing a similar trend in the face of more sexual harassment claims. Original Article: “After #MeToo, Men Begin Avoiding Female Co-Workers”.