Man on the Margin

Dedicated to reviving Classical Economics in the spirit of the citizen economist, Man on the Margin explains the Classical model that orientates the economic world around the entrepreneur and producer.  Those on the margin who change the world.

The Economic Model

I analyze the macro environment from a Classical economics perspective that puts production at the center of the economic universe. The Classical model contrasts diametrically with Keynesian demand-side theory, and its many iterations, that emphasizes consumption at its center. It is a Classical Copernicus vs. Keynesian Ptolemy view of the economic world. If the foundation that defines the model is incorrect, then the assumptions derived from the model will also be incorrect. In the same way that Ptolemy’s earth-centric model couldn’t properly explain the astrological world, Keynesian’s demand centric model can’t properly explain our economic world.

I learned the Classical model from Jude Wanniski. Jude synthesized economic thought across the spectrum of history’s great economic thinkers and distilled it into an analytical model. There is really nothing new under the sun in economics. The world is just more complicated and intertwined. Economics is a behavioral science. The hubristic attempt to shoehorn economics into a hard science defined by equations that spit out a desired result is the primary error in economic thought over the last century.

At its simplest, the unaltered formula for economic success is stable money, low taxes, and individual liberty. There is no historical example of an economic system founded and maintained on these principles that has ever failed.

Michael Kendall

Mike Kendall is nearly six-foot-five-inches tall, having to slouch at the physical to pass the Air Force’s sub-6’4″ pilot’s rule. Lean, sandy-haired, gimlet-eyed, he now serves as an airline pilot of Airbus 321s and for the last twenty years has been pursuing an avocation of studying money from an altitude of 35 thousand feet or so. — George Gilder, from Life After Google