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Biden’s veto of joint employer rule CRA a blow to small businesses
President Biden’s veto Friday of a Congressional Review Act (CRA) bill rolling back the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) “joint employer”…
Blog
Subsidy-free capitalism may require a constitutional amendment
Automobiles, electrification, ample consumer goods and mass marketing, a construction boom, and access to credit helped fuel the Roaring Twenties of a century ago.
Blog
Free the Economy podcast: Frontier economics with Kendall Cotton
In this week’s episode we cover the diamond jubilee of the Philadelphia Society, the cost of government regulation in the UK, the…
Search Posts
Blog
Feds Double Down on Failed Affordable Housing Mandates
Federal affordable housing mandates do little to increase homeownership rates, but they did help cause a devastating financial crisis in 2008 by encouraging risky lending. Yet the Federal…
Blog
The FTC Targets Apple Music: Part III
This is the third in a series of essays on the FTC’s investigation of Apple Music. In Part II of this series, we demonstrated that, even…
Blog
The Government Makes a Terrible Boyfriend
He’s from the government, and he’s here to help. That’s the comic premise of this summer’s best YouTube video series, “Love Gov,” from the…
Blog
Mount Vernon Cheers: A Song to Commemorate “I, Whiskey”
Our Indiegogo campaign for CEI’s new documentary “I Whiskey” is closing soon. So far, we have raised almost $75,000, but it’s not over yet.
Blog
William Faulkner Said it Best: “Civilization Begins with Distillation”
"Making whiskey is but one piece of the Great Story of Spirits. The Big Picture is the story of incremental progress, of continual innovation by…
Blog
Why Thieves Hate Free Markets
Don Boudreaux over at Café Hayek has just given a 2015 boost to a smart 2012 video from Learn Liberty on social cooperation in…
Blog
The FTC Targets Apple Music: Part II
This is the second in a series of essays on the FTC’s investigation of Apple Music. Part I discussed the reason for the FTC’s investigation as…
Blog
The FTC Targets Apple Music: Part I
When launching a new product, the goal is to create excitement, as any company will tell you. But Apple’s newly launched music streaming service, Apple…
Blog
Bastiat Society Rallies Business Leaders Together
My venerable colleague Fred Smith and I just returned from the Hoosier State, where we were honored to be guests of the Indianapolis chapter of the …
WND
The Obama-Clinton Cloward-Piven legacy
The WND cites CEI`s Bill Frezza on Obama`s welfare reforms: In his Forbes article, “Deconstructing Obamanomics: What is the Real Goal?,” Bill Frezza, an MIT…
Blog
The Persistent Truth of Income Mobility
There’s a lot being written these days about income (and wealth) inequality, and how a free market economy allegedly exacerbates the divide between the rich and…
Blog
What Cartoons Can Teach Us about Capitalism
The Freeman has an excellent article by FEE advisory board member Robert Anthony Peters on economic lessons in popular culture—in this case focusing on the wealthiest…
Blog
Do Conservatives Really Care about the Poor?
American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks has a new book out this week, The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous…
Blog
Join the “I, Whiskey” Team
The Competitive Enterprise Institute's newest film project, I, Whiskey: The Spirit of the Market, is currently in production, and you can help make it…
Blog
Highlights of FreedomFest 2015
The happy warriors of CEI have returned from our sojourn to Las Vegas and the excitement of FreedomFest 2015: Discover the New American Dream. The…
The College Fix
Two-thirds of subsidized financial aid swallowed up by tuition increases, Federal Reserve Bank study finds
The College Fix quotes CEI`s Hans Bader on federal student aid programs: The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Hans Bader cites…
Blog
Advocating Free Trade, Not Foreign Aid for the World’s Poverty
A Review of the Poverty Cure Documentary Series Poverty Cure is a six part documentary series directed and hosted by Michael Matheson Miller, produced by…
Blog
2015 CEI Dinner Movie: The Magnificent 7
Complete with cowboy boots, wagon wheels, lamps made out of whiskey bottles, and wanted posters of the most “notorious” U.S. regulators—if you’re talking to a…
Blog
Excerpts from Carly Fiorina’s Address at CEI’s Annual Dinner
Keynote address by business and nonprofit leader Carly Fiorina delivered at the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s annual dinner on June 11, 2015. Excerpts from text as…
Forbes
Memo To Presidential Campaigns — Federal Regulation Matters More Than Spending
President Barack Obama’s federal budget proposal for FY 2016 sought $3.999 trillion in discretionary, entitlement, and interest spending; the Republican alternative a little…
Blog
Politics vs. Principle: Export-Import Bank Edition
On the merits, the case for closing the Export-Import Bank is a slam-dunk. This has made life difficult for the bank’s supporters, especially since the…
Forbes
Now More Than Ever, Make ABC ‘s George Stephanopoulos Moderate Presidential Debates
I’ve never been a fan of the “objective media” platitude, preferring competing biases to pretended objectivity. The crucial corollary to that, though, is that…
Playbill
Feds Issue Statement Countering Report About Endangered Times Square Billboards
The theatre magazine Playbill quotes CEI's Marc Scribner on the outdated legislation threatening Times Square's billboards: The Washington Post reported, "The threat to…
Quartz
There’s a Rumor Going Around That New York Was Ordered to Take Down its Times Square Billboards
Quartz quotes Marc Scribner on the outdated legislative threat to Times Square's billboards: Meanwhile, some critics are tracing the unintended consequence straight back…
Volokh Conspiracy
How the Federal Government Could Use Conditional Spending to Force the Removal of Times Square Billboards
The Volokh Conspiracy links to Marc Scribner's writing on the bad laws behind the threat to Times Square's Billboards: Marc Scribner explains why the…
Blog
Deceptive Discrimination Laws
Discrimination may be bad for business, but that doesn’t mean laws banning discrimination are good for business. Often, these laws are like the proverbial Trojan…
Blog
CEI Statements on the Failed Comcast-Time Warner Merger
CEI responded to the news that the Comcast-Time Warner merger failed. You can read more analysis from CEI's Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews here.
Blog
Comcast-Time Warner Cable Merger Derailed
Today we’ve learned again that bureaucrats and their enormous kingdoms come before consumer welfare. The collapse of the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger merely because of the interference of government,…
Blog
Capitalism Makes a Comeback on Campus
There’s exciting stuff going on in the world of higher education these days for fans of free markets. Just last week, the University of Arizona’s …
Blog
How to Help Tesla and Taxpayers
Policies aimed at reducing auto emissions in California and 10 other states are having a troubling set of unintended consequences, according to a recent editorial at…
Blog
When Kittens Explode
A fascinating Kickstarter funding campaign just ended yesterday, and it was a major one. A new card game with the alarming title of “Exploding…
Blog
Zenefits: A Disruptive Company Fights Back
Sometimes cronyism in the business world takes the form of a company receiving special government favors and subsidies—the now-infamous Solyndra, for example—but sometimes it takes…
Blog
The Empire Strikes Back!
Right-of-center groups have for some time become a bit complacent. Sure the left had the universities, the media, and pop culture—but we had the think…
Blog
Educating Tomorrow’s Business Leaders on Markets and Politics
This weekend I attended a fascinating event at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business on the subject of economic inequality. Prof. …
Blog
Premature Capitulation?
Over the decades I’ve spent in this Heart of Darkness (a.k.a., the bowels of American politics), I’ve learned two lessons that have encouraged the steady…
Study
Free to Prosper
With the start of the 114th Congress comes a fresh opportunity to address the challenges created by a broken government. To kick off this new…
Blog
CEI Reacts to President’s SOTU Address
Lawson Bader reacts to the State of the Union Address: “Whenever a president starts talking about economic inequality and more ways the government can help,…
Blog
Central “Planning” Often Creates Disorder, While the Free Market Provides Consistency
Government planning often contains contradictory elements that provide inconsistent signals for regulated entities about how to behave. For example, the New Deal of the 1930s…
CNS News
Government’s Mixed Messages – ‘Making Marriage the Exception Rather Than the Rule’
Beginning in the 1930’s, the federal government sharply increased central planning of the economy and society. (Perhaps as a consequence, the economy…
Blog
The Future and the Regulated
Lawrence Summers, the enfant terrible of the economics profession, has written a thoughtful column on “Our Loss of Faith in the Future,” noting that…
Blog
Seven Quotes about Communism: Take 2
A few years ago I assembled several quotes about Communism that I thought would make good epitaphs for it. Unfortunately, the ideology has turned…
Washington Examiner
What Lame Ducks Might Do
Iain Murray spoke with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on Congress' Lame Duck December Q: With just a handful of legislative days remaining in December, what concerns…
Blog
Thanksgiving and Markets
When the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony celebrated the first Thanksgiving on Massachusetts’ Cape Cod, they shared a feast with the Pokanoket tribe, in thanks to…
Blog
Corporate Action against Disease Points Way to Resiliency Strategy for Developing World
In a piece at The Freeman today, I examine how corporations in the developing world have reacted to the threat to their workers from diseases such…
The Freeman
Greedy Corporations Save Lives
With Ebola wreaking havoc across West Africa, news that a private company has virtually eradicated the disease on its extensive property invites sighs of relief.
News Release
New Report “Beyond Gruber” Shows Government Officials Flip-Flopped on Obamacare Subsidies Story
WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 – Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) published a report by businessman and finance expert Scot Vorse highlighting a growing body…
Study
Top 5 Things Congress Should Consider During Lame-Duck Session
View the document here During Congress’ lame-duck session, both Republicans and Democrats will dig into a number of stalled pieces of legislation…
Human Events
If it Walks Like a Lame Duck
I’ve always found the term “lame duck Congress” an affront to waterfowl everywhere. And it’s odd to boot. Why does it matter if they have…
Blog
In Memoriam: Gordon Tullock
I write this Tuesday night as TV pundits drone on in the background. The Republicans may win control of the Senate, though races are too…
Blog
Gordon Tullock, R.I.P.
Imagine making Nobel-worthy contributions to a discipline in which you had almost no formal training. It’s an amazing feat. Gordon Tullock is one of the…
Blog
Volunteering Violation Vignettes
Did you know it is against the law to volunteer for a for-profit business? The issue has surfaced in a trio of varied settings recently.
Forbes
Hillary Clinton: Businesses Don’t Create Jobs (Just Speaking Fees)
This article was originally published at Forbes on October 26, 2014 Hillary Clinton’s October 24 speech supporting Martha Coakley, the Massachusetts Democratic…
Blog
The Tesla File: Government Favors Cut Both Ways
Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Motors has become a fascinating case study in economic freedom in recent years, although the narrative is a complicated one. The…
Products
What Is Plouffe’s Battle Plan?
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick’s decision to hire former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe raises some interesting questions. Uber, a social network offering consumers an attractive…
Blog
Must Every Product in the World Be Safe Enough for Children?
The New York Times reported Friday on the David-and-Goliath battle of businessman Shihan Qu, the last of the rare earth magnet renegades. Mr. Qu’s…
Human Events
He Who Can, Does. He Who Cannot Takes a Job with a Federal Safety Agency
A former colleague, who lived and worked in the U.S. on a valid work permit, would travel back to Canada periodically to renew the permit.
Blog
Billionaire Diversity: Foreign vs. Domestic
Brookings Institution scholar Darrell West, whose new book Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust is being released later this week, has another intriguing graphic…
Blog
STB Reauthorization Bill Threatens Rail Investment
The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation has scheduled a markup for tomorrow afternoon of the Surface Transportation Board (STB) Reauthorization Act (S.2777). If…
Human Events
Top-Rated Economies of the World Are Not By Coincidence
Isn’t it odd how we assign human characteristics to inanimate objects? We rank the “friendliest,” “least hospitable,” “most free” regions and countries. We nickname urban…
Blog
Celebrate Billionaire Diversity
Darrell West, a Vice President at the Brookings Institution, has a new book coming out next week on the political influence of the very wealthy,…
Blog
Obama “Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces” Executive Order Will Punish Firms in Pro-Worker States
Earlier, we discussed President Obama’s recent Executive Order 13,673, which “will allow trial lawyers to extort larger settlements from companies, and enable bureaucratic agencies to extract …
Blog
Duplicative New Affirmative-Action Rule Drives Up Taxpayer Costs and Restricts Competition
Does it make sense to require a park campground operator that has a few hundred employees at 120 different locations to come up with 120…
Blog
Executive Order Pressures Employers to Capitulate to Baseless Demands and Meritless Claims
A July 31 executive order from President Obama, E.O. 13,673, will make it very costly for employers to challenge dubious allegations of wrongdoing against them,…
Human Events
Business Vs. Labor is Really About Cooperation Vs. Confrontation
It’s an age old struggle—more often rhetorical than physical. Usually framed as business vs. labor, it’s really about cooperation vs. confrontation. Since humans could walk…
New York Times Magazine
Has the ‘Libertarian Moment’ Finally Arrived?
The Competitive Enterprise Institute's annual dinner and CEI president Lawson Bader are mentioned in a New York Times magazine feature article examining the opportunities…
National Review
Obama’s Idea of Transparency
Chris Horner is mentioned in a National Review article about the Obama administration’s lack of transparency: The Internal Revenue Service’s handling of the Lois Lerner…
Investor's Business Daily
States Tire Of Regulatory Overreach, Take Obama EPA To Court
William Yeatman is mentioned in an Investor's Business Daily article discussing why 12 states are suing the Environmental Protection Agency over proposed rules on greenhouse-gas emissions:…
Investor's Business Daily
Big Government Can’t Keep Up In Digital Era
Article by Michael Barone Earlier this week, I was thinking of writing a column about the lying and duplicity of ObamaCare backers who argued that…
Blog
The Let Me Google That for You Act
When it comes to government transparency, more is better. As a general principle, the government should make public as many of its documents as possible…
Austin American Statesman
Texans Should Beware of Internet Sales Tax
Texas is one of the nation’s best states for doing business, according to a recent CNBC survey. Lone Star lawmakers deserve credit for the pro-growth…
Blog
New Study Estimates around $70 billion in Financial Regulatory Costs
Complying with regulations is part of the cost of doing business. For bigger businesses that can absorb those costs (or rather, pass them on to…
Forbes
SEC Crowdfunding Barriers At South By Southwest
In mid-July, South by Southwest (SXSW) – the Austin-based yearly festival that brings together the creators of film, music and technology every March – trekked…
LA Times
Lawyers Challenging Health Subsidies Seek Quick Supreme Court Ruling
Lawyers challenging President Obama's healthcare law filed a quick appeal with the Supreme Court on Thursday, urging justices to take up the issue this fall…
Forbes
Executive Branch Power In The Crosshairs As GOP Readies Vote On Lawsuit Against Obama
Obama favors Executive Orders. Approval ratings seem to suggest the public favors Anti-Executive Orders. Increasingly, “the silken bands of mild government” that…
Human Events
Of Obsolete Regulations and Post-Prohibition Haggis
What comes to mind when you think of Scotland? Bagpipes, certainly, perhaps Scotch whisky, maybe William Wallace (or at least a version that looks suspiciously…
Blog
The American (Business) Revolution
On our nation’s 238th birthday, a flood of public events, political speeches, and TV specials will remind us of the courage of our colonial ancestors…
Blog
Ex-Im’s Invitation to Corruption
When government has a lot of money and power, it is natural for people to curry its favor. It is just as natural for those…
Human Events
1984 was an Enlightening Year
This year marks a quarter century since the collapse of the Berlin Wall. And that got me to thinking about how the world has changed…
Blog
Cantor’s Loss a Warning Shot to Supporters of Ex-Im Bank and Johnson-Crapo
Defying conventional wisdom as he often does, Pulitzer prize-winning pundit George F. Will disputed the notion that in the wake of the shocking primary loss…
Forbes
Can Ralph Nader Get Progressives and Libertarians to Make Common Cause?
Eighty years old and still full of piss and vinegar, Ralph Nader should perhaps add honey to his repertoire, as he attempts to woo libertarians,…
The American Spectator
Exporting Solyndras?
The New York Times’ crusading columnist Joe Nocera is an unlikely supporter of crony capitalism. Yet this week he has come out unabashedly in favor of the…
Human Events
Government and Baseball
Have you heard the one about attending a boxing match and a hockey game breaking out? Good jokes always contain elements of truth to…
Business Insider Australia
How A ‘Bunch Of Commies’ Are Forcing The Fortune 500 To Stop Destroying Rain Forests, Overfishing, And Burning Fossil Fuels
Even Greenpeace’s detractors have taken note of the organisation’s newfound potency. Fred Smith, former president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and founder of the…
Forbes
There’s A Way To Pay Off America’s Budget Deficits That Is Easy, And Wholly Painless
Whatever your views on the role of government, one thing is clear: There will be no way to pay for it if the economy doesn’t…
Forbes
Government Employee Unions Tee Up California’s Bankruptcy
Half a Billion Dollars. That’s how much the California Teachers Association and the powerful Service Employees International Union have spent on California politics since 2000.
Forbes
Paul Ryan Mentor Bob Woodson Slams War on Poverty
“Keep doing what yer doing and you’ll keep getting what you got.” Thus spoke Robert Woodson, explaining why the War on Poverty, now entering its…
Forbes
How to Ease the Crushing Costs of Federal Regulations
“You can look at the federal budget and see what we spend. There is nothing like that with respect to regulations. I tabulate the annual…
Forbes
Dueling Visions For Taxing Times: Grover Norquist v. Robert Reich
This is why I got into radio: A pairing of guests representing two competing visions for the nation’s economic future, each making their case in…
Forbes
Will Republican Culture Warriors Snatch Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory?
I was recently invited to speak at the annual Conservative Leadership Conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, a regional red-meat gathering of the conservative faithful trying to…
News Release
CEI Short Film “I, Pencil” Wins Grand Prize at Manning Centre Competition
WASHINGTON, March 28 –The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) animated short film, “I, Pencil” about the free-market wonders of making the common pencil won first…
Forbes
Can Booming Dubai Remind America How To Grow Again?
If you despair for America, visit Dubai. If you fear our nation’s best days are behind us, visit Dubai. If you believe American entrepreneurship is…
Forbes
Can Silicon Valley Sic Schumpeterian Disruption On Bloated City Governments?
It’s one thing to ship your tax money off to Washington, resigned to the fact that you have little control over the distant bureaucracy that…
Forbes
The Way It Was Under Walter Cronkite: We Were Starved For Media
“And that’s the way it is,” intoned Walter Cronkite, the “most trusted man in America,” at the end of each news broadcast. It seems…
Forbes
Acton Academy: Socrates’ Antidote for Government School Hemlock
Only someone in deep denial, or in total thrall to teachers’ union propaganda, believes our inner city public schools are anything more than dropout factories.
Forbes
10 Ways To Dodge The Mess We Baby Boomers Are Leaving The Millennials
The Greatest Generation bequeathed Baby Boomers a nation on the rise. After saving Western Civilization from fascism, they rebuilt a war-torn world, powered an economic…
Forbes
White House Income Equality Agenda Makes War On Progress
In tonight’s State of the Union Address, Mr. Obama will attempt to shake off the most disastrous year of his presidency by doubling down on…
Forbes
The Antigua Forum: Exporting A Different Kind of Latin American Revolution
Call it the “Free Market Davos.” The Antigua Forum, sponsored by Universidad Francisco Marroquín, in Guatemala, finished its third annual conference last week. For three…
Forbes
Anatomy of an NPR Hatchet Job, Target: Oil & Gas
“On-The-Job Deaths Spiking As Oil Drilling Quickly Expands” screams a supposed National Public Radio exposé on the “terrible price” we’re paying for the fracking…
Forbes
2013: The Year The Progressive Narrative Collided With Reality
When it comes to crafting winning political narratives, progressives have a natural advantage over conservatives. That’s because progressives have a free hand to project rosy…
Forbes
Obama to Health Insurance Companies: Merry Christmas. Now, Drop Dead.
Insurance is a complicated product. Even President Obama figured that out. Hundreds of highly trained actuaries spend thousands of hours assembling risk pools to determine premium levels,…
Staff & Scholars
Clyde Wayne Crews
Fred L. Smith Fellow in Regulatory Studies
- Business and Government
- Consumer Freedom
- Deregulation
Richard Morrison
Senior Fellow
- Antitrust
- Business and Government
- Capitalism and Free Enterprise
Fred L. Smith, Jr.
Founder; Chairman Emeritus
- Automobiles and Roads
- Aviation
- Business and Government
Ryan Young
Senior Economist
- Antitrust
- Business and Government
- Regulatory Reform