Donald J. Boudreaux Columns

To encounter the news today is to encounter an America verging on destruction. Global warming will soon incinerate us, but not before income inequalities turn ordinary Americans into the slaves of oligarchs. And as these ghastly fates unfold, those of us who somehow escape being raped, robbed and cheated out...

Minimum-wage legislation artificially raises firms’ costs of employing low-skilled workers. In consequence, some workers who would have jobs in the absence of the minimum wage are cast by the minimum wage into the ranks of the unemployed. This understanding was long the consensus among economists. Starting in the mid-1990s, however,...

Among my favorite books of this decade is “How China Became Capitalist” by Nobel-laureate economist Ronald Coase and Ning Wang (2012). In addition to offering fascinating details of Beijing’s post-Mao intrigues, the authors conclude that China’s remarkable economic growth over the past four decades occurred only to the extent that...

Today’s obsession with income inequality is an obsession with just one of the countless dimensions along which we human beings differ from each other. Many of these differences reflect individual choices. I spend six hours weekly (and weakly) lifting weights at the gym. The modesty of my effort combines with...

An obsession with income inequality would make sense only in a world in which wealth is created independently of the choices and actions of human beings. The same is true for the itch to soak the rich. If food, clothing, medical care, automobiles, houses, diamond rings, airplane seats, rolls of...