Robert Higgs
Robert Higgs is Senior Fellow in Political Economy for The Independent Institute and Editor of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and he has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, and the University of Economics, Prague. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow for the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation. He is the author of many books, including Depression, War, and Cold War.
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Articles by Robert Higgs
March 02, 2009
What is the right word to describe the U.S. government´s current and proposed fiscal condition: fantastic, unbelievable, surreal? The Obama administration now expects a budget deficit in fiscal year 2009 of $1,750 billion, or more than 12 percent of GDP. Total federal spending this year is exp...
February 06, 2009
I´ve been a little too busy to read the 647-page "stimulus" bill the House just approved and the Senate is set to consider. So, for the moment, I must rely on what others, such as the Wall Street Journal, are reporting about this $825 billion statute.
Given the gargantuan amount of money be...
January 12, 2009
According to a report just released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), "the [federal budget] deficit this year will total $1.2 trillion, or 8.3 percent of GDP." This seems about right for a banana republic. The bad news is that neither commercial banana cultivation nor a republican form of go...
January 06, 2009
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on December 24, 2008, Martin Feldstein gives us an article entitled "Defense Spending Would Be Great Stimulus." The title tells you everything you need to know: military Keynesianism is the medicine being prescribed by a leading figure of the politico-economic Esta...
December 15, 2008
Turned away by the Senate, the Big Three auto makers have resorted to begging the Bush administration to rescue them from the plight in which they now find themselves as a result of decades of poor management. Wailing and gnashing of teeth are all the rage in Washington as these wannabe plunderers w...
December 15, 2008
In an article published in 1997 titled "Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed After the War," I advanced the idea of regime uncertainty in an attempt to advance our understanding of the Great Depression´s extraordinary duration and of the highly...
December 01, 2008
Porfirio Díaz, the Mexican strongman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, famously described his country´s situation by exclaiming, "¡Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!" (Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!) I cannot ...
December 01, 2008
We are now hearing ominous warnings about imminent deflation. Checking the welcome page at AOL this morning, I see that the lead item in the financial news section heralds "The Looming Threat of Deflation." This headline encapsulates two highly problematic ideas. The first is that deflation would ne...
November 25, 2008
Ronald Reagan was no economist, but his economic logic was impeccable when he declared, "If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it."
So, as the current recession deepens and the rate of unemployment rises, we might have confidently predicted that Congress,...
November 11, 2008
Driving yesterday past the gasoline station where I usually buy fuel, I noticed that the price of the lowest grade of unleaded–the one I buy–was down to $2.09 per gallon. Registering this perception as a little piece of good news in an unhappy world, I drove on.
Later, however, I began to mull ov...
October 10, 2008
As a rule,we may assume that any statute containing the word "emergency" in its title, preamble, or statement of purposes is a bad law. If you want an apt example, consider the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, which the president signed into law on Friday, October 3, 2008, soon after it...
September 20, 2008
The failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, setting in motion the biggest government bailout/takeover in U.S. history, brings a grim sense of fulfillment to competent economists. After all, what did people expect, that water would flow uphill forever?
This financial mega-mess is the same sort of e...
August 25, 2008
People continue to assert that "nobody wants to lend" or that "credit has dried up," but the data fly in the face of such claims. A great deal of lending is taking place. The interest-rate data I reported in a previous post derive from this lending.
For example, commercial and industrial loans at...
August 07, 2008
Many people deny that the U.S. government presides over a global empire. If you speak of U.S. imperialism, they will fancy that you must be a decrepit Marxist-Leninist who has recently awakened after spending decades in a coma. Yet the facts cannot be denied, however much people´s ideology may...
February 05, 2008
On October 19, 2001, in speaking about the new government controls and heightened surveillance already being clamped on the American people in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney said that the new war "may never end. At least not in our lifetime. . . . The way I think of it is,...
February 05, 2008
Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer—except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs.
— George Orwell, Animal Farm
The beginning of political wisdom is the realization that despite everything you´ve always bee...
December 05, 2007
In 1958, the New Left sociologist C. Wright Mills made a seminal contribution to political science in his book The Causes of World War Three, by introducing the concept of “crackpot realism.” He applied the notion specifically to the intellectual outlook of top government officials, especially the o...
December 05, 2007
Discussions of calamitous government actions—engagements in pointless, costly, and bloody wars; counterproductive actions to avert or shorten economic recessions; botched relief and reconstruction efforts after natural disasters—often arrive at, if they do not begin with, condemnation of government ...
October 24, 2007
In the Bush administration’s latest attempt to put a prettier face on its war in Iraq, U.S. officials are making increasing reference to a “Korea model.” In this pipe dream, the situation in Iraq would be stabilized in the same way that the Korean War was resolved. Just as U.S. military bases and te...
October 24, 2007
Margaret Atwood’s poem “Siren Song” begins:
This is the one song everyone would like to learn: the song that is irresistible: the song that forces men to leap overboard in squadrons even though they see the beached skulls.
Our rulers know how to sing that song, and they sing it day and ...
September 03, 2007
The headline of an August 22, 2007, article in the New York Times reads, “Citing Vietnam, Bush Warns of Carnage if U.S. Leaves Iraq.” Readers with live brain cells must be stunned by such a warning. What, exactly, does President Bush imagine is happening every day in Iraq now? Does he envision scene...
March 17, 2007
When President George W. Bush presented his budget proposals recently for the fiscal year 2008, he emphasized that the nation’s security is his highest priority, and he backed up that declaration by proposing that the Pentagon’s outlays be increased by more than 6 percent beyond its estimated outlay...
November 28, 2006
War weariness is the prevailing public sentiment in the third stage of a major U.S. neo-imperialist war. In this prolonged stage, most people have grown tired of the war. They have surrendered their prior illusions about the glorious outcomes it was supposed to bring. They have come to understand th...
November 12, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO — “Thou shalt not steal” is a rule as old as human society itself. We are taught early to respect what belongs to others, and by the time we are three years old, we understand the difference between mine and thine. Those who do not take the lesson to heart and persist in treating every...
October 23, 2006
Bringing our fellow Americans to a greater understanding of the evils of a government-dominated society and the virtues of a free society has always been difficult and frustrating work. It's no wonder that Albert Jay Nock likened it to Isaiah's job. People are easily misled by promises of government...