economic policy — Bunk History

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Benjamin Franklin on the 100 dollar bill with a crash test helmet edited onto his head.

The Crash Next Time

Can histories of economic crisis provide us with useful lessons?

by Trevor Jackson via New York Review of Books on March 14, 2024

A painting of a farmer holding a hoe behind his back in an open field.

Eyes on the Farm Bill!

Congress’s periodic battles over the Farm Bill often pass unnoticed, but the document effectively determines what, how, and how much we eat.

by Christopher Bosso via New York Review of Books on March 10, 2024

Economist Milton Friedman poses next to a bust sculpture of himself

The Century of Milton Friedman

An interview with Jennifer Burns on her authoritative new biography of the American economist and the personal and intellectual origins of his theories.

by Jennifer Burns, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on February 5, 2024

Donald Trump in Alabama.

To Understand Trump's Appeal, Look to Alabama History

The transformation of Alabama politics in the 1960s and 1970s reflected the rise of a new version of Republicanism that Trump has perfected.

by Ashley Steenson via Made By History on January 25, 2024

Milton Friedman.

Milton Friedman, the Prizefighter

The economist’s lifelong pugilism wasn’t in spite of his success—it may have been the key to it.

by Krithika Varagur via The New Yorker on January 12, 2024

Collage depicting shipping containers, a scale weighing American dollars, and a screen of numbers and percentages

Free Trade's Origin Myth

American elites accepted the economic theory of "comparative advantage" mainly because it justified their geopolitical agenda.

by Oren Cass via Law & Liberty on January 2, 2024

Ronald Reagan addressing the nation on tax reduction legislation from the Oval Office

History Explains the Racial Wealth Gap

Ronald Reagan's economic policies exacerbated the racial wealth gap— and they've guided all his successors.

by Calvin Schermerhorn via Made By History on December 4, 2023

Tank on the street of Santiago, Chile.

How Pinochet's Chile Became a Laboratory for Neoliberalism

The Chicago Boys and the tragedy of the Chilean coup.

by Vincent Bevins via The Nation on November 14, 2023

Political cartoon depicting busts of Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and Alan Greenspan on a mantle with spider webs.

The End of Milton Friedman’s Reign

The Chicago school ruled supreme over economics—until recently.

by Patrick Iber via The New Republic on November 13, 2023

Swale Land, painting by Edward Mitchell Bannister, 1898, depicting nature.

Vacant Unsettled Lands

American thinkers consider what the already occupied West could fund.

by Michael A. Blaakman via Lapham’s Quarterly on October 25, 2023

Quarter teetering on the edge of a plank of wood

The 1970s Economic Theory That Needs to Die

Turns out you can tame inflation without triggering a recession. Will the Federal Reserve accept the good news?

by Rogé Karma via The Atlantic on October 20, 2023

Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Voices from the Wilderness

The actual history of New Deal policies provides little evidence that it was a rollicking success.

by Kevin Schmiesing via Law & Liberty on October 10, 2023

President Clinton walks with Jiang Zemin past rows of Chinese soldiers.

It’s the Global Economy, Stupid

A new book on the Clinton presidency reveals how it abandoned a progressive vision for a finance-led agenda for economics and geopolitics.

by Lily Geismer via The American Prospect on October 6, 2023

Children in a Head Start classroom look out a window at others in the playground.

America Already Knows How to Address Child Poverty

The history of Head Start shows that child poverty is a choice.

by Michelle Bezark via Made By History on October 5, 2023

Protesters and tenants facing displacement hold placards as they attend a rally against private equity-backed firm Greenbrook Partners in Brooklyn, New York on October 15, 2021.

Shared Terrain

The neoliberal order has been exposed as fraudulent, inefficient, and inequitable. Yet it hardly lies in the dustbin of history.

by Julia Ott via Dissent on September 19, 2023

Friedrich Hayek listens to the president of the Centro de Estudios Públicos in Chile, Jorge Cauas, speak in April 1981.

Neoliberal Economists Like Milton Friedman Cheered on Augusto Pinochet’s Dictatorship

Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman helped devise Pinochet's economic agenda and endorsed the brutal repression that was needed to force it through.

by Jessica Whyte via Jacobin on September 11, 2023

The Vessel in New York City.

Stumbling Into Submission: How Real Estate And Finance Capital Conquered New York City

Hudson Yards received a $6 billion cocktail of public subsidies, including tax breaks and infrastructure improvements, to create a billionaires' playground.

by Katelin Penner via The Metropole on September 6, 2023

The Life of the Party

In his latest book, Michael Kazin argues that the Democrats have long sought to build a “moral capitalism.” Have they ever succeeded?

by Osita Nwanevu via New York Review of Books on August 29, 2023

Axe chopping down columns

The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism

The free market used to be touted as the cure for all our problems; now it’s taken to be the cause of them.

by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on July 17, 2023

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signing the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Reduction Treaty in Washington, D.C., in December 1987.

The Myth of Reagan’s Cold War Toughness Haunts American Foreign Policy

Hawks may claim that uncompromising defense policies won the Cold War. But his pursuit of peace was more important.

by Sean T. Byrnes via The New Republic on July 6, 2023

Protesters holding a sign that reads "Student debt cancelation is legal"

History Says Student Loan Debt Relief Isn’t Un-American

Americans have long demanded — and regularly received — debt relief from legislatures.

by Emily Zackin, Chloe Thurston via Made By History on June 30, 2023

Painting of Washington and the Continental Army in winter.

Congressional Conflict of Interest

A foundational flaw of the United States.

by Larry Deblinger via Arc Digital on June 22, 2023

United States Capitol

America Is Headed Toward Collapse

How has America slid into its current age of discord? Why has our trust in institutions collapsed, and why have our democratic norms unraveled?

by Peter Turchin via The Atlantic on June 2, 2023

Senators Cory Booker and Chuck Grassley conversing.

How Washington Bargained Away Rural America

Every five years, the farm bill brings together Democrats and Republicans. The result is the continued corporatization of agriculture.

by Luke Goldstein via The American Prospect on May 24, 2023

American flag sign that reads "NWRO," "I support a guaranteed adequate income for all Americans"

Escape from the Market

Far from spelling the end of anti-market politics, basic income proposals are one place where it can and has flourished.

by Simon Torracinta via Boston Review on May 19, 2023

Bill Clinton in the background, another man in the foreground.

What the 1990s Did to America

The Law and Economics movement was one front in the decades-long advance of a revived free-market ideology that became the new American consensus.

by Henry M. J. Tonks via Public Books on May 17, 2023

The Federal Reserve building under ominous black clouds.

The Federal Reserve Exists to Protect The Economic Status Quo

What is the Federal Reserve, and who put it in charge? Is there no other way to fight inflation? Just what the hell is going on here?

by Rob Larson via Current Affairs on May 15, 2023

Milton Friedman (L) and James Tobin (R)

The Forgotten Case Against Milton Friedman

In 1967, Milton Friedman launched a counterrevolution in economics that overturned the Keynesian theory of inflation.

by Seth Ackerman, Thomas Palley via Jacobin on May 13, 2023

Migrants in line for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, barbed wire in the foreground.

Biden’s Border Policies Target Haitians. That’s No Accident.

The long history undergirding our harsh bipartisan migration policies.

by Leslie M. Alexander via Made By History on May 11, 2023

Political cartoon of the Lincoln Administration, reading "Running the 'Machine'", 1864.

Blues, Grays & Greenbacks

How Lincoln's administration financed the Civil War and transformed the nation's decentralized economy into the global juggernaut of the postwar centuries.

by Nicholas Guyatt via New York Review of Books on May 4, 2023

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