Over the past twelve months there have been considerable discussions of monumental public policy issues. But before 2016 ends we need to consider one more of (in)significant importance: what to do about the penny. As the Wall Street Journal noted earlier this week, in fiscal 2015, the cost to produce a single penny was 1.43 cents. In 2014, that cost rose to 1.66 cents. Despite years of effort to wring costs out of production, it is doubtful the copper-coated coin...

On December 27, 2016, at the age of 86, Thomas Sowell published his last column. After publishing dozens of books and hundreds of columns, Dr. Sowell’s retirement may mark the beginning of the end of an era of black intellectuals who were champions of political and economic liberty. Other black scholars like Walter Williams, W.B. Allen, and Shelby Steele are all in the 70s or 80s and there does not seem to be a cadre of like-minded black scholars in...

Gregg and Smith at Acton University On New Years Day, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Vernon Smith turned 90. To mark the occasion, Samuel Gregg wrote an essay for the Stream about Smith and the significance of his work. Gregg explains Smith’s most famous contribution to economics: Smith is best known for pioneering “experimental economics.” This involves behavioral experiments in which people are placed in a particular micro-economy in which they can engage in trade, but without knowing the conditions driving...

The minimum wage increased yesterday in nineteen states across the U.S.:Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, South Dakota, Vermont, and Washington. Increases inOregon, Washington, D.C., and Maryland will also take effect later this year. Will the increases help pull people out of poverty? Do they increase unemployment? Although the debate about this issue as raged since 1938, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the first federal minimum wage,...

As protests for a $15-per-hour minimum wage continue to rage across the country, cities like Seattle and states like California and New York have already begun to adopt such schemes. But alas, prices are not play things, and such measures are bound to reap a range of deleterious effects, from raised consumer prices to increased unemployment to reduced working hours to outright business closures. Contrary to the popular narrative, those consequences tend to hit small businesses and less-skilled workers first...

Note: This is post #15 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. The price system allows for people with dispersed knowledge and information to coordinate global economic activity. The global production of roses, for example, reveals how the price system is emergent, and not the product of human design. (If you find the pace of the videos too slow, I’d mend watching them at 1.5 to 2 times the speed. You can adjust the speed at which the video...

Shifts in the position of state legislatures during the recent election has made it likely that several states will be passing right-to-work bills in 2017. As Melissa Quinn of The Daily Signal notes, in Kentucky, Missouri, and New Hampshire, last month’s election resulted in a flip in party leadership in either governors’ mansions or state legislatures, which put previously defeated right-to-work legislation back on the table. Here is what you should know this issue which, as Quinn says, “pits the...

At the beginning of 2016, piled a list that included 1,034 predictions for ing year. I later went through and narrowed it down to the top 500 that I was absolutely certain would happen. Even after cutting the list down, though, I only managed to achieve a 67 percent accuracy rate. (Unfortunately, I forgot to post that list in public so it is difficult to verify. You’ll just have to take my word for it.) This year, in an attempt...

As e near to the end of another year, we want to thank readers of PowerBlog for menting, and sharing our posts over the past twelve months. If you’re a new reader we encourage you to catch up by checking out our top ten most popular posts for 2016: 1. Work is a gift our kids can handle Joseph Sunde The abundant prosperity of the modern age has brought many blessings when es to child-rearing and child development, offering kids...

As we enter into a new year here at Acton, we still have some items from 2016 to share with you. On October 3rd, we were pleased to e Karl Zinsmeister, Vice President ofPublications at the Philanthropy Roundtable, to speak on the importance of philanthropy in the United States. Philanthropy in America is a bursting, bubbling impulse that has vital effects on almost every sector of our society. Private action to solve public problems is one of the practices that...