Liberty
Biden’s role in today’s higher prices
Jeffrey Anderson writes for the Federalist about the previous president’s impact on today’s prices. Ever wonder why things that cost $40 just a few short years ago now feel like…
John Steele Gordon
American writer
Liberty
Filibuster’s history offers valuable lessons
John Steele Gordon writes for City Journal about the origins of a controversial U.S. Senate procedure. The word comes from the Spanish for “freebooter,” another name for pirate. In the…
Health Care
Historian offers useful background information about American health insurance
John Steele Gordon explains in a recent edition of Hillsdale College’s Imprimis how the history of American medical insurance has helped lead to present-day challenges. The original hospital insurance also…
Budget, Taxation & Economy
A poor piece of protectionist history
John Steele Gordon devotes a Barron’s column to a regrettable piece of American economic policy history. … [T]he Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 is certainly in the running for the…
Liberty
Economic historian searches for the richest person in history
John Steele Gordon relates an interesting tale in Barron’s about the man who might have been the richest in human history. One of the most intractable problems in economic history…
Liberty
Going beyond invention to tweaking, adaptation
Historian John Steele Gordon offers Barron’s readers an interesting lesson in the perfection and adaptation of new inventions. In the 15th century, Europeans brought together three technologies—gunpowder, cannon manufacture, and…
Liberty
The importance of glass
John Steele Gordon offers Barron’s readers a history lesson involving glass. Monks had known for some time that a piece of glass that was curved on one side magnified the…
Budget, Taxation & Economy
Historian Gordon offers top-10 list for corporate tax repeal
John Steele Gordon shares with Wall Street Journal readers a list of reasons for the United States to scrap its tax on corporate income. In 1909 President William Howard Taft,…
Energy
Historian Gordon profiles ‘first great man of science born of the working class’
John Steele Gordon shares with Barron’s readers a profile of Michael Faraday. [I]f he had little formal education, he was a voracious autodidact. Apprenticed to a bookbinder at age 14,…
Liberty
Given what we know about the value of entrepreneurship …
It’s nice to read within the latest issue of Money magazine that the percentage of jobless managers and executives launching new businesses jumped 31 percent last year. And the trend…
Liberty
Historian Gordon highlights role of entrepreneurship in American history
Entrepreneurs built the United States of America, as historian John Steele Gordon recounts in the speech adapted for the latest issue of Hillsdale College’s Imprimis. Gordon explains that this nation’s…
Liberty
Historian Gordon praises the ‘proofs of concept’
Economic historian John Steele Gordon returns to the pages of Barron’s this week to recount stories of technological innovations that turned out to be more “proof of concept” than practical…