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Photo of United States bill, saying "In God We Trust."

The Deep Religious Roots of American Economics

Any attempt to understand the complexities of American economic thought without considering the significant role of religious beliefs is incomplete.
by Benjamin M. Friedman via The MIT Press Reader on September 5, 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
Adam Smith.

The Contradictions of Adam Smith

Smith's influence on American politics, and the misunderstanding at the heart of our idea of the "champion of capitalism."
by Glory M. Liu, Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins via The Nation on December 14, 2022
Statue of Liberty's torch.

Why the Philosophers Libertarians Love Always Come Out Worse for Wear

Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek have been through the wringer.
by Rebecca Brenner Graham via Slate on December 5, 2022
Illustration of Economists in Different Positions in the Government

May God Save Us From Economists

Over the last half-century, economics has infiltrated parts of the federal government where it has no business intruding.
by Timothy Noah via The New Republic on October 25, 2022
Debt written on a blackboard

How We All Got in Debt

Consumer debt shapes American lives so thoroughly that it seems eternal and immortal, but it’s actually relatively new to the financial world.
by Louis Hyman, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on June 2, 2022
Collage of the U.S. Capitol, a factory, and the earth, connected by coins and price tag stickers.

How the Oil Industry Cast Climate Policy as an Economic Burden

For 30 years, the debate has largely ignored the soaring costs of inaction.
by Kate Yoder via Grist on April 7, 2022
Woodcut illustration from 1934 economics textbook depicting people walking from tenement houses past an advertising billboard and straight to a loan office.

Bad Economics

How microeconomic reasoning took over the very institutions of American governance.
by Simon Torracinta via Boston Review on March 9, 2022
Reprint from the September 1966 issue of AFL-CIO American Federationist, Box 38, Folder 4, William Page Keeton Papers, Special Collections, Tarlton Law Library, The University of Texas at Austin.

Controlled Prices

Before the rise of macroeconomics that accompanied World War II, price determination was a central problem of economic thought.
by Andrew Yamakawa Elrod via Phenomenal World on January 12, 2022
Collage-style design of Milton Friedman and his work

The End of Friedmanomics

The famed economist’s theories were embraced by Beltway power brokers in both parties. Finally, a Democratic president is turning the page on a legacy of ruin.
by Zachary D. Carter via The New Republic on June 17, 2021
Thorstein Veblen in 1880, the year he graduated from Carleton College

The Prophet of Maximum Productivity

Thorstein Veblen’s maverick economic ideas made him the foremost iconoclast of the Age of Iconoclasts.
by Kwame Anthony Appiah via New York Review of Books on January 3, 2021
Thorstein Veblen

The Gadfly of American Plutocracy

Far from a marginal outsider, a new biography contends, Thorstein Veblen was the most important economic thinker of the Gilded Age.
by Simon Torracinta via Boston Review on November 30, 2020
Thomas Piketty

Thomas Piketty Takes On the Ideology of Inequality

In his sweeping new history, the economist systematically demolishes the conceit that extreme inequality is our destiny, rather than our choice.
by Marshall Steinbaum via Boston Review on March 25, 2020
Several stores in a 20th century shopping mall

Paul Samuelson Brought Mathematical Economics to the Masses

Paul Samuelson’s mathematical brilliance changed economics, but it was his popular touch that made him a household name.
by Roger Backhouse via Aeon on February 10, 2020

The Mind Behind Early American Protectionism

Before free trade became a consensus, Friedrich List argued that U.S. industry should be put first.
by Tim Cavanaugh via The American Conservative on April 24, 2019

Atlas Weeps

Alan Greenspan and Adrian Wooldridge’s strange elegy for capitalism.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The Nation on December 12, 2018

Neoliberalism’s World Order

Neoliberalism set out not to demolish the state, but to create an international order strong enough to override democracy in the service of private property.
by Adam Tooze via Dissent on July 1, 2018

This Is Helen Keller’s 1932 'Modern Woman'

In 1932, Hellen Keller offered some advice for the “perplexed businessman.”
by Caitlin Cadieux via The Atlantic on February 27, 2018

What These Early-20th-Century Scholars Got Right About 21st-Century Politics

Unlike many economists today, they questioned fundamental social structure.
by Branko Milanović via Vox on January 10, 2018

Art Laffer and the Intellectual Rot of the Republican Party

The godfather of supply-side economics is largely discredited by his peers, but revered by Trump and the GOP.
by Jeet Heer via The New Republic on October 18, 2017

The Architect of the Radical Right

How the Nobel Prize–winning economist James M. Buchanan shaped today’s antigovernment politics.
by Sam Tanenhaus via The Atlantic on June 20, 2017
Workers adjust a metal sheet on a Titan missile assembly line.

The Permanent War Economy Doesn’t Benefit Workers

Advocates of “military Keynesianism” present it as a boon for the working class. In reality, it diverts resources away from social provision.
by Hanna Goldberg via Jacobin on June 23, 2025
Strings descend from the talons of an eagle's foot and hold up a shipping container.

Why Donald Trump Is Obsessed with William McKinley

McKinley led a country defined by tariffs and colonial wars. Trump is drawn to his legacy—and determined to bring the liberal international order to an end.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Yorker on June 16, 2025
Cover of book. Red text on a blue background with stickers of Karl Marx's face arranged like the 50 stars.

Marx: The Fourth Boom

Were you to vanish Marx from every library, you’d destroy the central interlocutor around which most of capitalism is built.
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Los Angeles Review of Books on May 27, 2025
John Cassidy

John Cassidy on Capitalism and Its Critics

The author on capitalism’s critics, why everyone is so unhappy with the system, and what may come next.
by John Cassidy, James Surowiecki via The Yale Review on May 27, 2025
Friedrich Hayek

Hokey Cowboy: Is Hayek to Blame?

Hayek suspected that nothing about the vindication of neoliberalism was likely to be straightforward.
by David Runciman via London Review of Books on May 22, 2025
Vintage illustration of three generations of a 1950s American family, sitting in their living room watching television (screen print), 1950.

How Social Reactionaries Exploit Economic Nostalgia

Conservatives think we need traditional hierarchies to reverse social decline; But it’s the economic equality created by strong unions that Americans miss.
by Meagan Day via Jacobin on May 20, 2025
Henry Carey
partner

The 19th Century Thinker Who Touted Tariffs

Trump is not alone in his support for tariffs. Henry Carey also believed tariffs could help American workers.
by Christopher W. Calvo via Made By History on April 28, 2025
U.S Custom House.

Lessons from Early America’s Tariff Wars

The 1790s debate shows that, even when they aim at moral goods, tariffs abet cronyism and corruption.
by John C. Pinheiro via Law & Liberty on April 23, 2025
Chinese migrants wrapped in blankets on a beach, from the cover of "Camp of the Saints."
partner

Mutant Capitalism

How the dystopian visions of the nativist right are in keeping with a long tradition of neoliberal ideology.
by Quinn Slobodian via HNN on April 15, 2025
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