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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…
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The American Spectator
Santa Capitalism
We should call it the “Great Fact,” argues University of Illinois at Chicago economist Deirdre McCloskey. “It” is the Industrial Revolution that, starting in Great…
Human Events
23 and Me for You and Me
My son’s birth is among my most treasured memories. I knew immediately his arrival had transformed my life. But, the joy of that memory comes…
Human Events
The Battle of Two Hedgehogs
As it happened, Simon won the bet. Because of his victory, he became a conservative hero. He died in 1998, but he continues to be…
Forbes
The Knockout Game Goes Viral, The Hunger Games It’s Not
Enthralled with the movie saga of starving and oppressed young heroes rebelling against brutal government tyranny? Then what do you make of gangs of inner-city…
Forbes
Battling For The Heart And Soul Of America’s Political Parties
To our progressive friends, it seemed like a century of advocating for government-sponsored universal health care reached fruition when the Affordable Care Act became the law…
Forbes
Why Obama’s Healthcare.gov Will Never Work As Specified
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” Thus answered the HAL 9000 computer in the classic Stanley Kubrick movie 2001: A Space…
Human Events
Obama, Father of all Czars
Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the U.S. Constitution states: No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States[.] But when George…
Human Events
Obama’s Brinkmanship
We all remember the term “brinkmanship” from the Cold War, coined by President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles. In an interview in Life…
Forbes
Is Eric Holder Playing Don Corleone To Jamie Dimon’s Bonasera?
As Don Corleone said to Bonasera in The Godfather’s iconic opening scene, “Some day, and that day may never come, I’ll ask a service of you.” For…
Forbes
The Land Of The Free Is Now A Nation Of Sheep, Wolves, Pigs And Sloths
No, this is not another diatribe about the futility of many gun control laws and the geographic correlation between the level of gun crime and…
Human Events
In Name Only
Traipsing through Dulles Airport the other day, my eyes were drawn to a series of wall poster advertisements. Each one featured a supposed “foreign aid…
Human Events
Converting the Unconvertible
Here’s a thought experiment: What words come to mind with the following statements? I grew up in Marin County, Calif., during the late 1960s and…
Human Events
No Bipartisanship, Please
We’ve heard it a million times: What Washington needs is more bipartisanship, more cooperation among the parties … like the old days. To which I…
Forbes
President Obama’s ‘Syrialoquy’: To Bomb, Or Not To Bomb
To bomb, or not to bomb, that is the suggestion; Whether ’tis nobler in the polls to suffer The Slings and Arrows of…
Forbes
Betting on the Apocalypse
ONE day in October 1990, the iconoclastic economist Julian L. Simon walked out to get the mail at his house in the Washington suburb of…
News Release
Ronald Coase Dies at 102; CEI Releases Interview Footage of the Nobel-Winning Economist
WASHINGTON, D.C., September 3, 2013 – Ronald Coase, who won the 1991 Nobel prize in economics for his work on transaction costs and property rights,…
Forbes
Ronald Coase Was The Greatest Of The Many Great University Of Chicago Economists
Ronald Coase (1910-2013), the greatest of the Chicago School economists in my view, died this week. Yet, his work lives on. If it gains the…
National Review
The Pinnacle of Rent-Seeking
In this post, Hans Bader of CEI explains how Georgetown Law School has figured out how to maximize its haul of federal-financial-aid money. You’ve almost…
Forbes
We’re In A Cultural War Between The Forces Of Economic Dynamism And Stasis
In a recent column, I noted that our tribal ancestors viewed entrepreneurs with suspicion. In their view, entrepreneurs were too willing to violate…
Forbes
The Founders’ Greatest Fears About Democracy Are Playing Out
Our Founders’ greatest fear that pure democracy would inevitably destroy itself is being played out in two distinct dramas, both headed toward the same ending.
Forbes
Want To Revive Glass-Steagall? Try This Wall Of Separation Instead
A debate is raging on the left, the right, and even in libertarian circles on the best way to escape from the Too-Big-To-Fail quagmire. But…
Forbes
Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge Was The Ultimate Job Creator
There is probably no figure more emblematic of the greedy, penny-pinching capitalist than Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Dickens is often seen…
Forbes
Can Post-Constitutional America Recover Its Freedom And Prosperity?
It is by now undeniable that our Constitution is being unwound at an accelerating rate. With the wave of a blog post, the President of…
Washington Times
Approaching economic stall speed
Government regulations not justified on a cost-benefit basis, plus the cumulative weight of all regulations, result in a dead-weight loss to an economy. The United…
Forbes
The Great Obamacare Intergenerational Swindle
In the sci-fi thriller The Hunger Games, a group of young people are made to compete against each other in a fight for survival. Post-Constitutional America…
Forbes
‘Racist’ Massachusetts Voters Defeat A Hispanic Republican Senatorial Candidate
Pretty offensive headline, isn’t it? Baselessly ascribing racist motives to voters for choosing Caucasian Rep. Ed Markey over Latino challenger Gabriel Gomez in this week’s…
Forbes
Coming Soon: A Dramatic Downshift In Company Size, Plus Hours Worked
The regulatory state never sleeps, relentlessly working day and night to tilt the economic playing field in favor of the politically connected. The regulations it…
News Release
Scholar Awarded Julian L. Simon Memorial Award for Moral, Historical Defense of Freedom
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 13, 2013 – CEI is pleased to announce that Deirdre McCloskey, Distinguished Professor of Economics, History, English, and Communication, at the…
Forbes
Once The Obama Narrative Implodes, Reality Breaks Through
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of…
Forbes
Consternated Conferences
The conservative movement’s factions also pushed back against the often puzzling decisions of the American Conservative Union board, which controls CPAC. The gay conservative group…
Forbes
The Sad Decline of the Word Capitalism
Not everyone is giving up. One example is Fred L. Smith, chairman and founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who has launched the…
Forbes
Privatize almost everything
Finally, if you are having trouble with the quiz at the beginning, you might wish to go the websites of major free-market think tanks, such…
Forbes
Poverty Professionals And The Crony Capitalists Who Love Them
Yes, it looks like a wedding announcement out of The Onion, but when it comes to making a killing off the never-ending “War on Poverty,”…
Forbes
When Steven Pearlstein Bashes Capitalism, Is It Really Capitalism?
Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein recently touched on several important tensions that arise in our conceptions of capitalism—tensions that lie at the core of America’s…
Forbes
We Can’t Save Capitalism Unless We Denounce Its False Prophets
A debate is raging among free market advocates regarding the proper posture to take with respect to Too Big to Fail (TBTF) banks. This has…
Cato
Public Choice and Political Advocacy
In the three decades since I founded the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I have seen the pro–free market intellectual movement grow by…
Cato
Slowly, GOP shifting on same-sex marriage
The final safe haven within the conservative movement for anti-gay bigotry — the American Conservative Union’s CPAC convention, held last week in Maryland — received…
Cato
Conservative case for gay marriage
In more signs of change, the organizers of the Conservative Political Action Conference were widely criticized by mainstream conservatives for excluding pro-gay organizations from this…
Cato
GOP not wedded to views on gays
And at the Conservative Political Action Committee convention, a panel sponsored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute drew a large and approving crowd for a discussion…
Cato
CPAC stars: Ten Republicans to watch (whether you love or loathe them)
CPAC organisers denied GOProud a booth at this year’s event. But the Competitive Enterprise Institute used its position as a CPAC sponsor, which gave it…
The Guardian
CPAC 2013: An angry and beaten US right fires out scattergun wacky policies in hunt for victory
CPAC embraced Trump but did not invite gay Republicans, with their GOProud organisation reduced to a single speaker on…
News Release
CEI at CPAC: “A Rainbow on the Right”
Last night at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CEI hosted an event titled: “A Rainbow on the Right: Growing the Coalition, Bringing Tolerance Out of…
The Guardian
CPAC Diary: Showdown on Gay Street
This panel, put on by the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, condemned intolerance from CPAC organizers, who were giving voters away by dismissing gay voters. They…
Wall Street Journal
He’s Still a Player
Many musicians have gotten their start in garages and, in the tech era, so have many entrepreneurs. But Herb Alpert has the rare distinction of…
Wall Street Journal
GOProud going to CPAC — well, sort of
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is sponsoring the panel entitled “A Rainbow on the Right: Growing the Coalition, Bringing Tolerance Out of the Closet.” As of…
Wall Street Journal
How Gay Rights Got into CPAC
Two years after GOProud was evicted as a CPAC sponsor, the gay conservative group’s president, Jimmy LaSalvia, has been invited to speak on a “pro-gay…
Wall Street Journal
Finally, the Gays Have Come Back to CPAC
The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a D.C.-based libertarian think tank that largely focuses on economic and environmental policy, will hold a CPAC panel featuring two…
Forbes
After The Sequester, Bring On The Blame Game
Should a miracle occur and the pending sequester actually kick in to reduce the growth of federal spending—said slowdown derided as “draconian budget cuts” even…
Forbes
Secrecy surrounds company suing Consumer Product Safety Commission
“The public does not have a right to know everything. Records are sealed for many and various reasons, generally to protect the innocent,” said Fran…
National Post
Frum Wrong About Budget Cuts
David Frum claims modest automatic budget cuts scheduled to go into effect in the U.S.A. in March will somehow harm the economy if they aren’t…
Washington Examiner
Letter to the Editor: Sequestration Cuts Will Increase Long-Term Growth
Re: "Drop in GDP a preview for area," Jan. 31 This article falsely claims that the U.S. economy shrank in the last quarter of 2012…
Financial Times
Letter to the Editor: Companies should never apologise for making products people enjoy
Sir, The key (if unintended) message of Alan Rappeport’s analysis of Coca-Cola’s response to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “anti-obesity” measures is that corporate appeasement…
Forbes
It’s Time For A Transparency-In-Government-Statistics Law
Question: When does a government agency chartered with collecting and disseminating economic data morph into a propaganda ministry? Answer: When it allows unaccountable bureaucrats answerable…
Washington Post
Fred Smith passes the torch at CEI
Most think tanks are earnest places — and then there’s the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “People say, ‘CEI has fun people, but some of them are…
Blog
Adam Smith’s Recommendation To End Illegal Immigration
Restrictions on immigration have created a black market in labor and movement. Currently, the U.S. government issues only 10,000 green cards to workers who lack higher…
Right Side News
Economic Freedom Declines Again; Government Control Is Bad for Your Health
Economic freedom has declined under the Obama administration, and America’s rank has repeatedly fallen on the Index of Economic Freedom and other rankings issued by…
Forbes
Deconstructing Obamanomics: What Is The Real Goal?
As President Barack Obama begins his second term, democratically returned to office by a majority of Americans who seem to buy what he is selling, it…
Blog
James Buchanan, 1919-2013
Economics has lost one of its greats. James Buchanan has passed away at age 93. Born on a Tennessee farm in 1919, he continued working…
Forbes
Clement Moore Revisited: Twas The Night Before Fiscliff
Twas the night before Fiscliff, when all through the House Not a statesman was stirring, not even to grouse. Neither bills nor amendments…
AJC
Tax pledge proves its worth
Grover Norquist’s Tax Pledge isn’t perfect. But it successfully forces lawmakers and taxpayers to address America’s current fiscal path. Opponents of the pledge say it…
Forbes
Can Union Backed Crowdfunding Rescue Hostess From Bankruptcy?
By now you’ve heard at least two opposing versions of the Tale of the Tearful Twinkies. In the first, a great American brand was driven…
The College Fix
Obama’s New College Bailout Will Fuel Skyrocketing Tuition
So argues Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute: We wrote earlier about perverse federal financial aid policies that encourage colleges to jack…
Forbes
Why Grover Norquist’s Tax Pledge Works
Listening to the media these days, it seems Grover Norquist is Public Enemy No. 1. His insistence lawmakers keep their promises to voters—in the form…
Forbes
A Tax Both Ayn Rand And Ralph Nader Could Love
Here is a puzzler worth pondering as Congress scrambles to find enough tax revenue to feed its insatiable appetite for spending. Can you come up…
Forbes
Grover Norquist’s Gnomes Duke It Out With The Tax Fairness Fairy
No one seriously believes that federal spending is going to be brought under control any time soon. Regardless of what deals are cut during the…
Forbes
Regulatory Uncertainty Drives A Fish Farmer To Foreign Waters
Feeding 7 billion people is no small challenge. As it has from time immemorial, high quality protein harvested from the sea plays a major role…
Forbes
A Guide To Talking Politics At The Thanksgiving Table
“And remember, no talking politics. Most of the people there will be liberals and you know how badly they react to opinions different from their…
Foundation for Economic Education
The Enduring Lesson of I, Pencil
As President Obama embarks on his second term, we’ll have to see whether he conjures up the specters of his controversial campaign moments. Recall his…
Forbes
Chronicling The Decline And Fall Of Entitlement Democracy
It’s been a week of sober reflection, accompanied by a self-imposed news fast, during which I’ve struggled to understand the deeper meaning of our recent…
Forbes
American Voters Choose Obama To Lead Us – Down The Road To Ruin
Despite a good look at the bankruptcy of entitlement democracy playing out across the euro zone, Americans have gone to the polls demanding to join…
Forbes
To Finally Abolish Affirmative Action, All Americans Should Check The Minority Box
As the Supreme Court makes another foray into the mess of confusing and contradictory rulings over the constitutionality of race-based college admissions, one has to…
Forbes
Hey Romney, Here’s A Comeback To Obama’s $5 Trillion Tax Cut Canard
Framing a debate is half of winning it—especially when neither facts nor reason are on your side. The Obama campaign’s repeated claims that, if elected…
Forbes
Study blasts federal economic development initiatives
From Brian Pederson’s article in Lehigh Valley Business: A new study blasts the federal Economic Development Administration (EDA) and calls for its abolishment,…
Forbes
What Do The War On Cancer And Climate Modeling Have In Common?
The reverential treatment accorded to climate modelers by the media, policymakers, and the public is one of the great mysteries of modern life. But it…
Forbes
Promoting Libertarianism, John Ramsey Plays The Long Game
Ron Paul’s presidential campaign was unique in the history of the libertarian movement, attracting more serious attention than those of any of his libertarian predecessors. Campaigning as…
Study
The Case for Abolishing the Economic Development Administration
EDA investments do little more than shift resources from one area of the country or the economy to another. EDA’s funding should be immediately revoked,…
News Release
New Study Makes Case Against Economic Development Administration
WASHINGTON, D.C., Sept. 18, 2012 — It is the mission of the Economic Development Administration (EDA) “to lead the federal economic development agenda by promoting…
Forbes
Polaroid, Kodak, Apple: No One Escapes the Winds of Creative Destruction
Hundreds of companies are born every day. Most don’t survive the Darwinian struggle to attract customers, achieve profitably, and reach adolescence. The fittest claw their…
Forbes
Moral Hazard: Corrosively Dissolving Democracy From The Inside
“I know the Alt-A mortgages we’ve been shoveling at Fannie Mae are a disaster waiting to happen, but a few more bonus checks like…
Forbes
It’s Futile Rep. Ryan, In Politics Feelings And Emotion Always Trump Simple Math
Well, at least the blue tribe and the red tribe are in violent agreement about something. Both think Mitt Romney made a definitive choice in…
Financial Times
Letter to the Editor: The Most Cosmopolitan of Composers
Sir, Andrew Clark’s appreciation of Frederick Delius and of Sir Thomas Beecham’s Delius recordings is most welcome and perceptive (“…
Real Clear Markets
Markets, Not Mandates, Are the Key to Sustainable Development
What exactly is sustainable development? Former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Brundtland, speaking at the United Nations' Stockholm Conference in 1972, described it as "development that…
Forbes
As Liberty Fades, Contemplate The Wisdom Of The Olive Tree
It’s easy to despair watching the flame of liberty flicker and die. To accept the sad fact that our Founders’ vision of limited government could…
Daily Mail
America’s Real Choice: Cronyism or Capitalism
America appears to be at war with itself, if the Presidential campaign is anything to go by. The adverts that have saturated the airwaves over…
New York Post
Letter to the Editor: Quota-Free Classes
Kyle Smith misquoted me in his otherwise excellent column, “Political Science” (PostScript, July 15). I never said “courts have ruled that applying Title IX to…
New York Post
Cooperation Is What Markets Are For, Not Governments
When President Obama told a Virginia crowd last week that “if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own,” he was right. His…
America's Future Foundation
Profiles in Liberty: Fred Smith
From Tom Swanson's column for America's Future Foundation: As he prepares to name a successor, Fred Smith has big plans for the…
Forbes
You’re Wrong President Obama, Howard Johnson Built His Business
Over the weekend, President Obama sent a message to all American entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs. The message was, “Nothing special about you!” At a campaign…
Forbes
Obama: Biggest Spender in World History
From Peter Ferarra's article in Forbes: Moreover, as Competitive Enterprise Institute scholar Hans Bader reported in May, “The Democrat Congress [in 2008], confident…
Washington Times
Letter to the Editor: Higher Education Not Always a Necessity
George Leef is right that the “huge cost of college is often a waste” (“Burst the higher education bubble,” Commentary, Wednesday). Some 17 million Americans…
Washington Times
Is China doing capitalism better than the United States?
D.C. anchor Mike Walter interviews Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital Inc., and Fred Smith, President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute about a…
The American Spectator
Obama v. Job Creation
From Doug Bandow's op-ed in The American Spectator: Clyde Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has produced the latest edition of his…
Real Clear Markets
The Lean Forward Campaign: A Recipe for Economic Stagnation
It's hard to miss the MSNBC motto's comfy similarity to President Obama's reelection slogan. Widely mocked since its debut, the "Lean Forward" campaign celebrates the…
Forbes
Lamenting the Lost Legacy of Independence Day
Why do we still celebrate Independence Day? Is it a lingering habit, a mindless bit of nostalgia, a time to indulge in fireworks and barbecues,…
Washington Post
Romney Finally Punches Back on Outsourcing
From Jennifer Rubin's post in The Washington Post's Right Turn: Hans Bader of the Competitive Enterprise Institute wrote about…
Washington Post
What Liberals Don’t Understand About Government and Our Founding Fathers
Is there anything the government can’t — or shouldn’t — do? For the men who gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to draft…
Real Clear Markets
Newspapers Must Die: Long Live The News
Fear not the future. The long anticipated demise of the conventional newspaper business is a cause for celebration, not anguish. Freed from the shackles of…
Newsbusters
The Horror: NYT’s Timothy Egan Forced to Watch Fox News
From Clay Waters' article on Newsbusters: "Timothy Egan, a liberal reporter turned columnist for the New York Times, was forced to watch Fox…
Forbes
President Obama: The Biggest Government Spender In World History
From Peter Ferrara's column in Forbes: As Hans Bader reported on May 26 for the Washington Examiner, the budget approved and implemented by…
Blog
Remembering Elinor Ostrom
Among the individuals with whom I wish I could have greater opportunities to exchange ideas is Elinor Ostrom. She passed away today, and now I…
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