by David Penticuff It is promising for my community that the spending of its county economic growth council is coming under official scrutiny this summer. Historically, the council has gotten most of its yearly funding from the Economic Development Income Tax (EDIT), a local income tax for county residents. While the so-called growth council started as a private not-for-profit, it has been taking tax dollars to supplement its own growth rather than the prosperity of our community. Back…

by T. Norman Van Cott The longer I taught economics to university students, the more I came to appreciate subtleties in markets grounded in secure private property rights. Indeed, as my awareness of these subtleties developed, a sense of awe arose. The subtleties go far beyond that typically drilled into freshmen and sophomores. Let’s put everything in terms of a simple product like raspberries. Buyers and sellers have conflicting objectives. Buyers want low prices; sellers…

The author, an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and a former associate counsel to the president of the United States, served as an officer in the United States Army assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency. RECALL THAT THE SO-CALLED ‘SMOKING GUN’ TAPE that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation was of a June 1972 Oval Office conversation in which the president directed Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman to call in CIA Director Richard Helms…

by Leo Morris Both ends of the alley behind my house were blocked one day last week. It annoyed me no end. But it also set me to thinking about the need to vigorously defend our private property rights even as we acknowledge the proper place of public property in the grand scheme of things. I dare not park in front of my house. My street is one-way east from a popular drinking spot. My…

A FRIEND EXPRESSED ADMIRATION for how quickly I was able to go through the morning newspaper. No, I explained, I’m not a speed reader. Reductions in newsroom staffing have had a lot to do with it, but also I am aided by a lifetime of amalgamated discernment. I know which stories can be ignored at no cost to my working knowledge. I am encouraged to list them here: Stories with headlines imploring that this or that…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. In some ways, immigration is not all that difficult to analyze. The first key is an opening concept from the first course in Microeconomics. When immigrants come here to buy and sell, to work for employers and own businesses, to borrow and invest, and so on, they engage in a wide variety of voluntary, mutually beneficial trades that are good for them and good for society. Of course, there’s more to…

by T. Norman Van Cott Article 1, Section 10, Clause 2 in the Constitution of the United States has been instrumental in making the U.S. economy the powerhouse that it is today. How so, you say? It did so by curbing individual states’ ability to impose tariffs on goods and services coming from or going to other states. This has made the United States a free trade area from its founding in 1789. In fact,…

by Leo Morris I was spending a quiet day amusing myself with harmless diversions. I played a little guitar. I read a few chapters in a mystery novel. I watched part of an old movie on cable. I gave a Sunday newspaper the once-over. I studied my recipe for breakfast quiche to see if I still wanted to use Old Bay as the main seasoning (I did). I thought I was having fun. Silly me.…

by Eric Schansberg, Ph.D. “An earthquake achieves what the law promises but does not in practice maintain — the equality of all men.” — Ignazio Silone There has been tons of attention on income (and wealth) inequality in recent years — much of it driven by a nasty combination of ignorance and envy. For example, folks often conflate income inequality at a point in time with a lack of economic mobility over time. One can easily…

AN ELEPHANT HAS ENTERED THE ROOM of Indiana’s economic-development officialdom. Nobody wants to talk about the growing amount of research challenging its policy formula. It costs a lot and it doesn’t seem to work. An adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review last month described it in the inverse. He told a group of Indiana businessmen and opinion leaders they would be better off without any official economic-development effort whatsoever. Rather than provide an economic advantage over…