Year in Review

The year now passing began with sickness for yours truly — which more-or-less set the tone for the ensuing twelve months. Good grief!

Research and writing therefore proceeded haltingly and with many interruptions but, with the onset of winter, there was some resolution in selecting ideas to explore in the weeks ahead:

1. Free markets, capital formation, entrepreneurship, and legal rules, as essential components of economic growth;
2. American politics and fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, culminating with the presidential election in November;
3. British conservatism, in theory and practice, especially from the historical perspective of Benjamin Disraeli and Margaret Thatcher; and
4. Mediæval culture, particularly in relation to the Enlightenment, and the rise of capitalist economics and the pursuit of liberty. (My conceit is that a conservative appeal to the Middle Ages, rightly applied, can provide all the better aspects of the eighteenth century, without those ‘atomising’ elements eschewed by Tories.)

So, before sending 2015 on its way and welcoming with hopeful anticipation the new year, here is a round-up of essays posted throughout the year:

• New year, old politics, for the Republican-led Congress — on the Washington establishment’s penchant for spending, regardless of political party in power. This essay was published courtesy of the Centre for Policy Studies;
• The genius of America’s founding culture sustains her still — on the lessons of America’s republican founding (by way of an excellent analysis by Myron Magnet), in which the path to prosperity was marked by individual effort and responsibility, with government limited to enforcing the rule of law and safeguarding the polity from threat: two modest objectives most states fail to realise, as illustrated by Public Choice Theory. This essay also published courtesy of CPS;
• Only the market can give life to the Living Wage — on the reason why government-imposed minimum wage regulations only shrink the labour force, and why only the market can provide real wage increases;
• What Role Does Charity Have in the Workplace? — on charity as best conceived as a voluntary act with negative consequences when applied to the marketplace, whether by government fiat or misplaced good intentions. This essay published courtesy of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute; and
• Unleash prosperity by giving full rein to capital accumulation — to mark the launch of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, an essay on the true source of economic growth, capital accumulation, which increases production and employment, and benefits consumers with lowers costs and more purchasing power.

If any of these essays catch your fancy, please share them with your friends and colleagues. DMI needs encouragement to flourish and seek out new research and publishing opportunities!

As a special treat, the Institute was mentioned in a New York Sun column on America’s ‘Constitution Day’. Many thanks to the editor, Seth Lipsky.

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It only remains to remind you to follow DMI on Twitter and on Facebook, and to wish all my readers good health and good fortune in 2016!

Year-End Update

Before sending 2014 on its way and welcoming with hopeful anticipation the new year, here is a round-up of some essays posted in recent months:

• Will America follow Canada’s economic fight against impertinent obstructions? — on the lessons Canada (and other Commonwealth countries) can teach the United States on the inverse relationship between economic growth and state interventions, whether in the form of taxation policy, regulations, or government debt;
• Market independence or business as usual? — following Republican gains in the November U.S. mid-term elections, will the GOP adhere to constitutionally limited government of enumerated powers or will Washington politics be ‘business as usual’, pursuing bureaucratic aggrandisement, crony capitalism, and fiat money policies? This essay was published courtesy of the Institute of Economic Affairs;
• Ethan Frome’s winter of discontent — on the role of winter in Edith Wharton’s novella, infusing the family of one Massachusetts community with physical and spiritual bleakness; and
• Scrooge: a Christmas capitalist-icon — why the skinflint is the hero of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, illustrating the sources of wealth for community well-being and the distinctions between public welfare and private charity.

If any of these essays catch your fancy, please share them with your friends and colleagues. DMI needs encouragement to flourish and seek out new research and publishing opportunities!

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#DMI_Reads Update — Reading has been sporadic since the last update; but apart from dipping into the works of William Graham Sumner (Yale sociologist from the early 1900s, who wrote on politics and economics), and the fictional works of Edith Wharton and Charles Dickens (mentioned above), I began the autumn with a Downeast classic and ushered in the winter months with three fine works in political economy:

• Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1896) — a lovely summer sojourn in a Maine coastal community. Curiously, Edith Wharton found Jewett’s perspective unrealistically pleasant and an incentive to write Ethan Frome;

• Roger Koppl’s From Crisis to Confidence: Macroeconomics after the Crash (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2014) — an analysis of why Western growth continues to lag, despite many countries’ recovery from recessionary woes;

• Dwight Lee and Richard McKenzie’s Failure and Progress: The Bright Side of the Dismal Science (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 1993) — a contemporary classic in public choice economics and capitalist theory, important for its examination of the role of present failure for future success and of the dynamic nature of the marketplace, influenced by market competition and political competition; and
• Christopher Snowdon’s Selfishness, Greed and Capitalism: Debunking Myths about the Free Market (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2014) — a marvellous debunking of progressive liberal myths concerning self-interest, ‘perfect knowledge’, GDP, and levels of poverty.

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It only remains to remind you to follow DMI on Twitter and on Facebook, and to wish all my readers good health and good fortune in 2015!