Russ Roberts — economist and host of the excellent EconTalk podcast — wrote a penetrating essay on what we can learn from Adam Smith’s first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. According to Roberts, [N]ot everything that is important can be quantified. I worry that as economists, we too often are like the drunk at 1 am looking for his keys under the glare of a streetlight. You go over to help and when you fail to find the keys...

As the Brexit debacle monopolizes UK news, the government quietly released a consequential announcement: The National Health Service (NHS) is considering repealing requirements that emergency rooms in England treat or release patients within four hours. The new guidelines vindicate critics of single-payer health care, who say the government inevitably rations care, downgrades its own standards, and then declares victory. The UK’s goal of a four-hour wait in accident and emergency rooms (A&Es) is roughly twice as long as patients wait...

Failure to reform the national health system has ledthe government to collapse inone of the most statist governments following the Nordic model. Prime Minister Juha Sipiläof Finland and his cabinet members have resigned after failing to rein in the nation’s health care costs and provide petition. es as reports show private citizens in Finland increasingly turning to the free market to meet the shortfalls of the nationalized system. Sipilä’s proposal would give citizens – who may already choose between public-sector...

When we think about economics we can tend to immediately focus on mathematics, data, and graphs, but at its core economics is the study of human action in a marketplace. Economics is a human science. Which means we need to have a clear vision of who the human person is and how he acts. Much of modern economic theory operates with the assumption of human beings as “rational maximizers.” This is called homo-economicus—economic man. Now the reduction of man to...

When es to policy choices, professional economists are famous for being overly circumspect. President Harry Truman plained, “Give me a one-handed economist! All my economists say, ‘on one hand . . . on the other.’” There are some areas, though, where basic economic theory is so obvious that it’s not hard to find a majority of economists to agree. A prime example is the popular, but misguided, proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15. A recent survey of 197...

Did St. Patrick really drive all the snakes out of Ireland? Was he ever canonized a saint? Was he even Irish? In this short video Timothy Paul Jones answers those questions and more. ...

The recent revelations of a nationwide college admissions and testing bribery scheme have met with a variety of reactions. There have been conversations about fairness and privilege in admissions practices. There have been expressions of lack of surprise, cynicism, or “that’s just how the world works.” And there are already the beginnings of a class-action lawsuit by students who claim their college degrees have been devalued by the rigged admissions system. There are a lot of reasons to be pessimistic...

It’s no secret that as the Chinese economy enters a slowdown, the Chinese government has been taking an ever-more authoritarian approach towards virtually every aspect of life in the People’s Republic. In this regard, few areas have received more attention than religion. This ranges from the imprisonment of anywhere between 800,000 and 2 million Uighur Muslims (something explored at length by leading Islam and liberty scholar Mustafa Akyol) to the burning and demolition of Protestant and Catholic churches. Things are,...

As Muslims gathered for Friday prayers, a shooter livestreamed himself entering the Masjid Al Noor mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, and killing 41 people with a semiautomatic weapon. He then drove to the Masjid mosque in nearby Linwood, where seven more have died. (An additional victim died off the premises, bringing the death toll to 49 as of this writing.) Police also found several improvised explosive devices on vehicles in the area. Authorities have arrested four people – three men...

Earlier this month a French court convicted Cardinal Philippe Barbarin for failing to report alleged sexual abuse by a priest of his archdiocese. This has further fueled the sense that the Church faces one of its most serious crises since the Reformation, says Samuel Gregg in a new article for the Catholic Herald: Barbarin himself has been a larger-than-life figure in French Catholicism. Gifted in languages, an engaging public speaker, a missionary in Madagascar, and a marathon runner, he publicly...