Peter's Blog

Data Needs Theory to Make Sense

Most analysts treat economic data as the starting point for understanding the economy: if GDP rises, things are good; if it falls, things are bad. What they fail to appreciate is that data without theory is meaningless, and that any interpretation of economic data already presupposes a theoretical framework, whether the analyst knows it or […]

Why Warsh Wants to Ignore Inflation’s Real Cost

As Kevin Warsh takes over as Fed chair, his stated preference for narrower, trimmed inflation measures is drawing scrutiny, and for good reason. Though it is technically correct that government-driven price hikes from wars, lockdowns, and years of interventionist policy are not “inflation” in the strict monetary sense, Warsh’s push to exclude them from the […]

Can Consumption Create Wealth?

Most Americans are familiar with the Keynesian idea that government spending and money creation can stimulate a sluggish economy by boosting demand. What those not versed in Austrian economics may not appreciate is that this framework gets the causal order exactly backwards: production must come before consumption, and genuine demand can only arise from prior […]

How Monetary Policy Punishes Saving

For generations, the wisdom passed down at kitchen tables was simple: spend less than you earn, save patiently, and let time do its quiet work. That world has been inverted. For over two decades, the Federal Reserve has systematically penalized savers through artificially low interest rates and persistent inflation, undermining the concepts of sufficiency and […]

Does Government Create Wealth or Consume It?

Defenders of big government often argue that roads, courts, and national defense prove the state is indispensable to prosperity, but this reasoning contains a fatal flaw. The state has no independent source of wealth: it first expropriates resources from private producers through taxation, then provides services with those resources, and finally points to those same […]

Why Capitalism’s Real Alternatives Are Worse

As Trump’s crony capitalism and socialist inroads in the Democratic Party crowd out defenders of free markets, many assume the only choice is between capitalism and socialism. But a third danger lurks — the possibility that rejecting both leads not to liberty, but to feudalism or primitivism, systems where rights collapse and poverty reigns just […]

Both Parties Get “Tax the Rich” Wrong

The debate over taxing the rich has returned to the headlines, with progressives arguing that no one can legitimately earn a billion dollars and conservatives firing back that wealth at the top reflects risk-taking and value creation. Both sides, however, miss the deeper truth: a century of government intervention has so warped the economy that […]

Inflation Surges as War Spending and Deficits Grow

The latest inflation reports show price increases surging to multi-year highs across nearly every major category — driven not just by energy costs, but by the Federal Reserve’s continued easy-money policies and the compounding fiscal burden of new wars and runaway deficits. The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed […]

How Antitrust Policy Helped Kill Spirit Airlines

Most Americans are familiar with the frustrations of air travel, including high fares and limited options. Those less versed in the history of airline regulation may not realize that this oligopoly was built with government help from the very beginning, and that antitrust crusaders who claim to fight Big Business often end up strengthening the […]

War’s Lasting Cost to Liberty

War is often sold to the public as a noble necessity, but those not versed in its true history may not appreciate how reliably it serves as the greatest enemy of liberty, inevitably stripping citizens of rights, expanding state power, and destroying the futures of those who fight. The following article was originally published by […]