Peter's Blog

The US tax system is often praised as a means of funding essential government services and redistributing wealth. A deeper analysis reveals that it is primarily driven by envy and resentment rather than a genuine concern for the common good. By pitting different groups against each other, the tax code fuels social division and undermines […]

The AI bubble has become a frequent fixture in the financial news cycle as pundits and institutions express their fear that, when it pops, it could drag the global economy into crisis. Central bankers and institutions like the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) are sounding alarms about debt-fueled AI investments, overexuberance, fragile funding structures, and […]

Nearly all read distributive forms of government try to find some way to give moral justification for their poor economic choices. They assume that it will be easier for people to accept wealth redistribution if they can somehow prove that the wealthy are morally inferior. While like any group of people the wealthy have their […]

Money Supply is a very important indicator. It helps show how tight or loose current monetary conditions are regardless of what the Fed is doing with interest rates. Even if the Fed is tight, if Money Supply is increasing, it has an inflationary effect. One key metric shown below is the “Wenzel” 13-week annualized money […]

The divide between philosophy and action has continually widened for centuries. Particularly in the 20th century, when people began to believe that education for most people was applied skills training, and only the most theoretically inclined were encouraged to study ideas. Even for those who chose to study philosophy, their education was intended to prepare […]

The latest figures show the money supply growing at its fastest pace in over four years, with consumer prices climbing right alongside it. Yet the Federal Reserve continues to insist its policy stance is at least moderately restrictive, even as real wages fall further behind inflation. The following article was originally published by the Mises […]

On June 17th, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) kept its federal-funds-rate target at 3.50–3.75 percent, repeating its wait-and-see stance even as headline inflation refuses to retreat to the central bank’s two-percent objective. In a unanimous 12–0 vote, policymakers argued that U.S. growth “is expanding at a solid pace” and promised, in their words, “The […]

Americans are increasingly anxious about artificial intelligence and what it means for their jobs, and politicians on both sides of the Pacific have begun promising to manage the transition. But the real question isn’t whether AI will displace certain jobs (that kind of creative destruction is the normal engine of economic progress); it’s whether the […]

The current study of economics in an academic setting is extremely overrun by empiricists. Empiricism is a method of study that involves primarily driving conclusions from what can be observed rather than first principles. Empiricism links the validity of every idea back to observable points of evidence that can be used to support it. While […]

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 […]