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Category: Economics

  • Economic Blues: Are Blue States Driving the “Affordability Crisis”?

    By Selwyn Duke Here’s an interesting little fact: Texas’ real GDP growth rate for the second quarter of 2025 was 6.8 percent. New York’s was 1.5. Sure, this is anecdotal, and not all conservative states are faring as well as Texas (or even New York). Yet it does apparently reflect a pattern. Just consider an…

  • Save NYC Housing by Destroying It? That’s Mamdani’s Socialist Plan

    By Selwyn Duke If you’ve watched the 1990 film Goodfellas, you may remember the segment where mob boss Paulie becomes a partner in a restaurant, then purposely bankrupts the place and torches it to collect insurance money. But the true story is far darker still. In reality, Paulie surreptitiously orchestrated the restaurateur’s difficulties in the first…

  • Affordability Crisis? Perspective and Propaganda

    By Selwyn Duke Some politics wonks may remember 2010’s JournoList scandal. It was revealed that hundreds of left-wing journalists, academics, and political activists had been colluding via a private online gathering place and coordinating strategies and talking points. In other words, the “independent” media people certainly weren’t independent of each other; they were operating as…

  • The Great Worker Replacement? Trump Admin Turns to Humanoid Robots for Productivity

    By Selwyn Duke A quarter-century ago, Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy wrote the jarring essay, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.” He warned that new technologies threatened to make humans obsolete (if not endangered). Now that future is nigh.

  • Forget “Democratic Socialism,” Says Economist; Embrace “Democratic Capitalism”

    By Selwyn Duke “The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to make a profit,” wrote labor leader Samuel Gompers. This is also the sentiment with which economist and professor Mark Skousen opened a recent article. In it he urges readers to “share the wealth,” not “redistribute it.” And Skousen discourages the…

  • MASSIVE Retail Theft: The Unspoken Cause of High Prices and Economic Harm

    By Selwyn Duke There’s more than one reason for the high prices hurting average Americans. But one of them is seldom discussed: the massive retail theft now plaguing our country. How serious is it? The total annual 2022 losses (e.g., including security and insurance) associated with criminality amounted to approximately $112.1 billion. Theft alone was 65 percent of…

  • Should Once-colonized Lands Thank God for Their Colonizers?

    By Selwyn Duke Years ago I had an African friend, from Zambia, who mentioned his participation in a school debate on colonialism. He took the position that it was a net positive for his land. Then there was the Indian man I knew who despised Mohandas Gandhi (whose image is far different from the reality). He said, spewing a tad…

  • As the Democratic Civil War Continues, Are Some Libs Suggesting Adopting GOP Economics?

    By Selwyn Duke There’s currently a war raging for the soul of the Democrats. Having been repudiated in the 2024 election, the party appears rudderless and leaderless, with two of its most prominent current faces being an ex-bartender and a career-politician lawyer, both from New York. (Yes, that would be Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Chuck Schumer.)…

  • Is the Blue-state Model on the USSR’s Path — and Poised to Collapse?

    By Selwyn Duke “If something can’t go on, it won’t,” goes the paraphrase of economist Herb Stein. Speaking of which, we often hear about America’s below-replacement-level birth rate. What we don’t hear much about, however, is which Americans aren’t reproducing. And if you guessed that the biggest offenders are our land’s liberals, go to the head of…

  • Be Like Sweden? Actually, America Beats Europe — Hands Down

    By Selwyn Duke “There oughta be a law!” goes the old frustration-born refrain. Or if not a law, maybe another regulation or mandate — one making us, perhaps, more like Europe. After all, they have “free” healthcare, maternity leave, better quality of life, and more vacation time. In a nutshell, “Europe is better,” as multimillionaire…