Raymond C. Niles is a Senior Fellow the American Institute for Economic Research. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University and an MBA in Finance & Economics from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. Prior to embarking on his academic career, Niles worked for more than 15 years on Wall Street as a senior equity research analyst at Citigroup, Schroders, and Goldman Sachs, and as managing partner of a hedge fund investing in energy securities. Niles has published a book chapter and numerous articles in scholarly and popular publications.
Visit his blog Capital Thoughts by Raymond Niles at Substack.
Walk through almost any beloved old Manhattan neighborhood and you quickly run into a strange fact: much of the city people love would be illegal to build today. In 2016, The New York Times published an analysis titled “Forty Percent of the Buildings in Manhattan Could Not Be Built Today.” Using data from Quantierra, the […]
If price controls make housing affordable, New York’s favorite food deserves the same protection. Mayor Mamdani, Please Freeze the Price of Pizza!
The AI boom is just the latest chapter in mankind’s upward rise that began with the Industrial Revolution and the power loom more than two centuries ago.
Immigration is our lifeblood and has made America great. Let’s keep America great. Let’s make America great again.
End rent control. Legalize housing investment. Let prices tell the truth. Let builders build. Let landlords maintain their buildings. Let tenants freely move. Let New York grow again.
If the supply of new housing is restricted by the government’s monopoly power to initiate physical force against housing producers, the market price of housing will be higher.
Reinforcing what economic theory tells us, evidence of the harm of price controls abounds in history, from the infamous 303 A.D. Edict of Emperor Diocletian in Ancient Rome to America’s 1970s gasoline price controls and, perhaps most infamously, New York City’s disastrous eight-decade-long experiment with rent control.
End the “Lottery Life” in housing and watch market entrepreneurs do the rest.
After thwarting the oil industry by banning pipelines and new oil and gas leases after his inauguration, Biden’s recent proposals are watered-down varieties of the failed policies that created the multiple gas crises that rocked the nation in the 1970s.
“In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing.”
The Biden Administration has decided to extend Trump’s mercantilist trade policies. Hostility to free trade Is now officially bipartisan.
Wealth is our protection against the potential effect of climate change.
I remember that day so well, too well. It is almost like it was yesterday.
What is the solution to this problem of scientific groupthink?
Government should neither mandate nor ban vaccine passports or the other health decisions that individuals morally and rightfully should make for themselves.
I fear the answer is “Yes” based on the faith of his followers.
Professor Niles discusses the economic, political and moral aspects of the U.S. dollar, inflation, gold standard, fiat, money and legal tender laws.
We can keep the term “monopoly,” but it should be reserved for describing those government-created and sanctioned dinosaurs like the US Postal Service.
Trump is a classic mercantilist. A mercantilist favors exporters over importers and the use of government tariffs to promote (or “protect”) less efficient, but politically favored “national champion” companies against their foreign competitors.
The key to getting wealthy in a capitalistic society is to produce something so valuable that millions of people want to trade for it. This is the source of all great historical fortunes.
The elephant in the room is that government interventions like California’s AB5 make Uber, Lyft and their drivers worse off because it imposes an outcome on them that they would not have voluntarily chosen.
The impending takedown of TikTok sets a dangerous precedent. It marks a serious diminution of the rule of law and a major step-up in the authoritarian use of power by our executive branch.
We must judge ourselves and others by the content of our character, not by the color of our skin, our gender, socio-economic class, or any other group characteristic.
Populism is what happens when a republic becomes a democracy, and politicians must curry the favor of voters in order to win office.
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