The 2008 edition of Clyde Wayne Crews’s Ten Thousand Commandments was released earlier this month.  If you’re curious at all about the size and scope of America’s regulatory bureaucracy, Crews offers a very good survey.  You can download it as a PDF file by clicking here.

The prolific French scholar Guy Sorman has recently published l’Economie ne ment pas (The Economy Does Not Lie).  As I do not read French, I’m glad he’s also published an essay in the City Journal, titled “Economics Does Not Lie.”  In it, he and Columbia U. economist Pierre-Andre Chiappori reduce economics to “ten proposiiton” that “[a]lmost all top economists . . . would endorse,” namely:

1.  The market economy is the most efficient of all economic systems.

2.  Free trade helps economic development.

3.  Good institutions help development.

4.  The best measure of a good economy is its growth.

5.  Creative destruction is the engine of economic growth.

6.  Monetary stability, too, is necessary for growth; inflation is always harmful.

7.  Unemployment among unskilled workers is largely determined by how much labor costs.

8.  While the welfare state is necessary in some form, it isn’t always effective.

9.  The creation of complex financial markets has brought about economic progress.

10.  Competition is usually desirable.

Sorman says, “The more the public understands and embraces these propositions, the more properous the world will become.”  Just so.  For his elaboration on these points, read the whole thing.