Money

The 1790s debate shows that, even when they aim at moral goods, tariffs abet cronyism and corruption.

Today no one on either side of the political spectrum would present themselves as an enemy of choice. Sophia Rosenfeld exposes the complex legacy of this idea.

As Americans file their taxes this tax season, the Trump administration threatens to unravel the modern fiscal state.

How the dystopian visions of the nativist right are in keeping with a long tradition of neoliberal ideology.

An American story.

How today’s far right manages to combine the call for economic freedom with pseudoscience about natural hierarchies of race and IQ.

How endless options became our only option.

William Jennings Bryan stoked a worker revolt against protectionism that led to the first income tax.

How neoliberals fell in love with “human nature”—the glue that still unites the divergent factions of the new right.

Trump claimed that the income tax was passed for “reasons unknown to mankind” and caused the Great Depression. Here’s the real history.

The 1930 tariff bill hurt exporters and provoked other countries to enact their own tariffs as the U.S. economy grappled with the Great Depression.

A global marketplace has shaped the U.S. whiskey industry for a century, even as it brands itself distinctly American.

As vital to the success of industrial New England as the mill girls who toiled in the factories were the women who oversaw their lodging.

Lessons from Bear Stearns's collapse 17 years ago.

In the 1990s, an entire industry was born of trying to convince Americans that Beanie Babies were a great investment opportunity.

Three new books propose market solutions to problems that require government intervention. We’ve been here before. It didn’t end well.

According to Andrew Kahrl, the property tax has been used to disposs black homeowners since the 19th century.

In 1932, married women were among the first targets in a campaign to reduce federal spending and balance the budget.

The Reagan administration offers a cautionary tale about cost-cutting zeal crashing up against the reality of how government works.

For decades, the NCAA vigorously opposed sports gambling. Now, March Madness is one of the most bet-on sporting events.

On the movement that fought for old-age pensions during the Great Depression.

The push to make students into customers incentivizes faculty to seek visibility through controversy rather than through traditional scholarly achievement.

Today’s attacks are just the latest form of backlash to the New Deal.

Widening the lens to capitalism itself could yield insights on how to close the gap.

In the Seventies, one feminist movement campaigned to make domestic labour both visible and recompensed.

Henry Charles Carey is arguably the most influential economist in American history.

What were we thinking, buying so many of these fragile, messy, remarkable ovals? Get used to high egg prices, it was a miracle they were low in the first place.

Why do Americans idealize people who found businesses?

Black Marxist thought emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.

A new dual biography turns the lens on the towering architects of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.