Prosperity

Socially Unjust Inflation: Why Recessions Are Inevitable and Salutary

Inflation is profoundly socially unjust. Its causes lie above all in an expansionary monetary policy, and this must be stopped. If policymakers want to prevent the inevitable recession that will follow, they will only make the problems worse.

EU Taxonomy: The Road to a Green Planned Economy

With its so-called taxonomy, the European Union is planning an economic structure that will be characterized by bureaucracy and malinvestment. The drastic consequences for productivity and prosperity will only gradually become apparent.

The ECB Faces a Predicament, the Euro an Impasse

With the now obvious failure of the ECB’s inflationary low interest rate policy, things are now also bad for the euro. The “whatever it takes” approach to saving the euro has reached a point where a reconsideration is necessary.

“Doux Commerce,” or the Peacemaking Power of Trade: Just a Dangerous Illusion?

Does trade among nations promote peace? The liberal-minded Enlightenment affirmed this under the phrase “doux commerce.” At present, however, we are witnessing how economically closely linked nations are at war with each other.

The Governments Were Financed Through by the Printing Press, And Now We Have Inflation

The rise in inflation does not fall from the sky. Inflation means general devaluation of money, not an increase in individual prices. It is the result of the money glut of the last several decades. Avoiding the dramatic consequences could make things uncomfortable.

Do We Need a ‘Great Reset’, or More Capitalism?

For many, capitalism needs to be reinvented. And yet it proved to be robust, innovative and enormously successful, especially during the pandemic. Thus, the idea of a “Great Reset” merely serves familiar anti-capitalist prejudices.

The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)—The Best Social Program in the World

Economists and researchers in the U.S. agree: the Earned Income Tax Credit helps millions of households stand on their own two feet. Work is rewarded, and with the help of this program, one million children have escaped child poverty.

Globalization Before and After the Covid-Pandemic: Should There Be a New Normality?

It is not globalization, nor the market economy, nor capitalism that is a danger and should be reformed; it is the policies that might provide the wrong, anti-market response to the pandemic that are the real danger precisely to the growth of prosperity in the world’s poorest countries.

Green Climate Policy: Moralism, Ideology and Dirigisme

The Greens are painting a picture of environmental and climate apocalypse. In this way, they try to moralize the debate and present themselves as the advocates of the good. On closer inspection, their program turns out to be ideological wishful thinking that eschews capitalism and the market economy.

Navigating Crises without a Compass: Politics in the Quicksand of Interventionism

Under the guise of the COVID-19 crisis, attempts are being made to use the crisis for a political agenda that would not have found majority support before. The role of the state is expanding. A new policy approach is necessary to secure prosperity.

The Universal Destination of Goods and Private Property: Is the right to private property only a “second-tier” natural right?

Did the rich get rich by robbing the poor? Theology and Catholic social teaching have long known that wealth generation is not a zero-sum game, but a process from which everyone benefits.

Low Interest Rate Policy Cripples the Economy and Reduces Prosperity

Japan’s low interest rate policy began 30 years ago, about 15 years earlier than in the EU. But three decades of low interest rate policy meant three lost decades for Japan. In an interview with Stefan Beig, economist Gunther Schnabl explains why the low interest rate policy is so damaging to prosperity.