Ryan W. McMaken
Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is a senior editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in public policy and international relations from the University of Colorado. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.
Ryan W. McMaken Articles
In the year since Donald Trump’s “liberation day” in April 2025—on which he began raising import taxes on Americans —1.2 million fewer Americans are now working, and inflation-adjusted hourly earnings are still below where they were in...
On April 15, Americans face the deadline for sending to the federal Internal Revenue Service a report on all their income. Most Americans do this because failure to do so is likely to result in fines and possibly imprisonment. If one...
The US Treasury Department last week released its monthly report on federal spending and revenue. March spending for the US federal government was up by more than $20 billion, or by nearly four percent, from March of last year. In spite of...
A central problem of political theory has long been the question of “who watches the watchers?” This stems from the fact that it is generally assumed that it is necessary to grant the civil government a monopoly on coercive power in order...
As 2025 came to an end, Bloomberg reported that “the prosperity gap between big and small businesses” was getting bigger: “Economists note a divergence between the fortunes of small and large companies, with small businesses struggling and...
After a long delay, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics today reported its price inflation report for the first time since the September report. According to the report, price inflation, as measured by the CPI slowed in November, both...
The Bureau of Labor Statistics finally released its November report today—after a nearly ten-day delay—and the latest data shows that the employment situation in America continues to slowly worsen. During November, the unemployment rate...
In recent months, Federal Reserve officials have repeatedly referred to monetary policy as restrictive. In September, Jerome Powell said policy was “clearly restrictive,” and in November, New York Fed President John Williams stated “I...
Over the weekend, Donald Trump hinted that he’s planning to implement a new kind of mortgage. On Truth Social he posted an image showing Franklin Roosevelt under the phrase “30-year Mortgage.” Next to this, Trump posted an image of himself...
The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday voted to again reduce the target policy interest rate by 25 basis points, down to an upper bound of 4.0 percent. The FOMC has now cut the policy rate (i.e., the...
