My syndicated column this week discusses the "fairness" of wealth inequality:

A free market will create big differences in wealth. That wealth disparity is simply a byproduct of freedom - vastly diverse individuals competing to serve consumers will arrive at vastly diverse outcomes.

That disparity is not unfair - if it results from free exchange.

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That's the title of tonight's show.

Ok, most bankers aren't evil. Except the ones who who took on too much risk, assuming housing prices would only rise -- then lost billions of dollars and were saved by a taxpayer-funded bailout. They are evil.

Maybe that's unfair. They just chased opportunity. I mostly blame the politicians who grabbed our money and bailed them out. Had they not done that, then the bankers would have just lost their own (and their reckless investors') money, not taxpayers' money... continue reading »

Complaining about high oil prices last week, Bill O'Reilly argued:

There is plenty of oil in the USA. Prices should not be at record levels. But they are because the oil companies are sending their products overseas to make more money...

His solution? America should tax American oil refiners when they sell overseas:

If you are going to refine in the United States, you sell to the United States. And if you don't, you pay a higher tax to export, all right?

That's intuitive: Keep gasoline in America to keep prices low.

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Bill O'Reilly was on the warpath last week about record-high oil prices. He says collusion among greedy oil companies is a big factor, and he bet me $1,000 that the gas stations in his town charged the "exact same price," which he says is evidence that they collude.

I checked his town's prices, and he's wrong. I win $1000! Here were the prices this afternoon:

Gulf: $3.95 ... Getty: $3.99 ... Shell: $4.05 ... Mobil: $4.07... continue reading »

A just-retired public school principal writes me after my special:

You nailed the problems and issues in today's public education... with the current teacher unions, textbook companies, and especially teacher TENURE... teacher "tenure" is all but stopping 21st Century educational reform all over the United States... continue reading »

I titled my show tonight, "What if Libertarians Were in Charge?"

I don't expect the world to become libertarian any time soon. But perhaps "free cities" will take hold and give people options to move to a more libertarian society.

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Cubans gear up for change. According to this week's New York Times, buying and selling homes in Cuba will be legal by the end of the year. It's about time.

In 1959, the Cuban government banned private property sales. The economy remained stagnant for five decades... continue reading »

The number of Internet users worldwide has now surpassed two billion and so many of us have integrated the web into our lives that it's hard to quantify how much it's worth to us. But The Fund for American Studies gave it a shot.

They asked people this question:.

How much would someone have to pay you to give up the Internet for the rest of your life?

Would a million dollars be enough? Twenty million? How about a billion dollars? ... continue reading »

Obama recently said he would investigate speculation in the oil market.. “We are going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain,”

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders thinks he already knows why gas prices rose.

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On my FBN show this week, we cover entrepreneurs, like the ones who created Intel, Genentech, Apple, Cisco, Microsoft. They created vast wealth and, of course, cool things. Is it coincidence that all that creation happened in San Francisco and Seattle, the two metropolitan areas farthest from Washington DC? I doubt it. Sadly, those company now spend millions on lobbying—millions that would be better spent on inventing.

We’d be better off if we just had fewer rules... continue reading »