Table of Contents
Foreword Judge Andrew P. Napolitano xv
Preface xix
Part I Politics and the State
1 It's Who You Know 3
2 What's the Point of Demonstrating? 5
3 Partisan Politics: A Fool's Game for the Masses 9
4 Democracy's Most Critical Defect 12
5 Nothing Outside the State 17
6 Consent of the Governed? 19
7 Why This Gigantic "Intelligence" Apparatus? Follow the Money 24
8 Can the Dead (Capitalism) Be Brought Back to Life? 28
9 The Welfare State Neutralizes Potential Opponents by Making Them Dependent on Government Benefits 32
10 The Systematic Organization of Hatreds 35
11 All Men Are Brothers, but All Too Often They Do Not Act Accordingly 38
12 Once More, with Feeling: Our System Is Not Socialism, but Participatory Fascism 40
13 Love, Liberty, and the State 43
14 Legitimacy 46
15 Political Problems Have Only One Real Solution 49
16 The Power of the State versus the Power of Love 51
17 State Power and How It Might Be Undermined 55
18 All Government Policies Succeed in the Long Run 58
19 Crisis of Political Authority? I Wish! 61
Part II On Doing Analysis in Political Economy
20 Ten Rules for Understanding Economic Development 67
21 Underappreciated Aspects of the Ratchet Effect 73
22 Diagnostics and Therapeutics in Political Economy 76
23 Can the Rampaging Leviathan Be Stopped or Slowed? 81
24 Higgs Is Just a Pessimist 87
25 My Question for the Doomsters: Then What? 90
26 Defense Spending Is Much Greater Than You Think 94
27 Which End, if Any, Is Near? 98
28 Communism's Persistent Pull 101
29 The Dangers of Samuelson's Economic Method 104
30 Don't Accuse Me of Blaming America When I Blame the Government 111
31 Extreme Aggregation Misleads Macroeconomists and the Fed 115
32 Why Do So Many People Automatically and Angrily Condemn Historical Revisionism? 120
33 Where Should the Burden of Proof Rest? 124
34 Politics and Markets: A Highly Misleading Analogy 128
35 Social Science IOI: Three Ways to Relate to Other People 132
36 Ten Fallacious Conclusions in the Dominant Ideology's Political Economy 135
37 Regime Uncertainty: Some Clarifications 138
38 Not Every Intellectual Gunman Is a Hired Gun 142
39 Truth and Freedom in Economic Analysis and Economic Policymaking 145
40 Austrian Economics: The Queen of the Experimental Sciences 152
41 Not All Countries Are Analytically Equal 154
42 Creative Destruction-The Best Game in Town 157
43 Thinking Is Research, Too! 161
Part III Money, Debt, Interest Rates, and Prices
44 Macroeconomic Booms and Busts: Déjà Vu Once Again 167
45 The Continuing Puzzle of the Hyperinflation That Hasn't Occurred 170
46 Money versus Monetary Base: An Elementary Yet Critical Distinction 173
47 The Euthanasia of the Saver 176
48 The Fed's Immiseration of People Who Live on Interest Earnings 180
49 Extraordinary Demand to Hold Cash: The Mystery Persists 183
50 More Monetary Peculiarities of the Past Five Years 187
51 A Bogus Example of Controlling Inflation with Price Controls 190
52 Monetary Policy and Heightened Price Volatility in Raw Materials Markets 193
Part IV Investment and Regime Uncertainty
53 Regime Uncertainty: Are Interest-Rate Movements Consistent with the Hypothesis? 199
54 Do the Post-Panic Changes in Corporate Bond Yield Curves Indicate Regime Uncertainty or Only Expectations of Increased Inflation? 203
55 The Great Divergence: Private Investment and Government Power in the Present Crisis 206
56 Private Business Net Investment Remains in a Deep Ditch 210
57 The Confidence Fairy versus the Animal Spirits: Not Really a Fair Fight 214
58 Important New Evidence on Regime Uncertainty 217
59 The Sluggish Recovery of Real Net Domestic Private Business Investment 221
60 Government Spending and Regime Uncertainty-A Clarification 225
Part V Boom, Bust, and Macroeconomic Policy
61 World War II: Still Being Touted as the Quintessential Keynesian Miracle 229
62 One More Time: Consumption Spending Has Already Recovered 232
63 U.S. Economic Recovery Remains Anemic, at Best 234
64 Likely Fiscal and Monetary Legacies of the Current Crisis 239
65 Counsel of Despair? 249
66 Unprecedented Household Deleveraging since 2007 252
67 An Overview of Recent Changes in Federal Finances 254
Part VI Labor Markets
68 Will the Real Rate of Unemployment Please Stand Up? 259
69 Short-Term Employment Changes in Longer-Term Perspective 262
70 Cessation of Labor Force Growth since 2008 266
71 Labor Markets Are Still in Bad Shape 269
Part VII Libertarianism
72 Are Questions of War and Peace Merely One Issue among Many for Libertarians? 275
73 Freedom: Because It Works or because It's Right? 282
74 The Salmon Trap: An Analogy for People's Entrapment by the State 286
75 Libertarian Wishful Thinking 289
76 "There Were Giants in the Earth in Those Days": Genesis 6:4 292
77 The Rodney Dangerfields of the Ideological Universe 294
78 Classical Liberalism's Impossible Dream 297
79 Why the Precationary Principle Counsels Us to Renounce Statism 300
80 Modern Communications Technology-Savior or Soma? 302
81 On My Libertarian Catholicity 306
Part VIII Remembrances of Parents, Teachers, Colleagues, and Comrades
82 William Jess Higgs (March 21, 1909-October 15, 1977) 313
83 Work in Progress: A Boy and His Mom 316
84 Murray N. Rothbard: In Memoriam 321
85 Jiirg Niehans (November 8, 1919-April 23, 2007) 326
86 R. Max Hartwell (1921-2009) 329
87 Manuel F. Ayau (1925-2010) 331
88 Joseph Sobran (1946-2010) 332
89 Morris David Morris (February 10, 1921-March 12, 2011) 334
90 Siobhan Reynolds: A True American Heroine (1961-2011) 336
91 Anna Jacobson Schwartz (November 11, 1915-June 21, 2012) 339
92 Thomas S. Szasz (1920-2012) 341
93 James M. Buchanan (October3, 1919-January 9, 2013) 344
94 Armen Alchian (April 12, 1914-February 19, 2013) 347
95 Robert William Fogel (July 1, 1926-June 11, 2013) 349
96 Donald S. Barnhart (July 18, 1925-September 8, 2009) 353
Part IX Just for Fun
97 Mainstream Economists Will Have a Blast at This Year's Halloween Parties 357
98 "American Pie": Altered to Lament My Life and Times as an Economist 360
99 A Vulgar Keynesian Visits My Chamber 365
Index 367
About the Author 378