Founded | March 7, 1946 |
---|---|
Founder | Leonard E. Read |
Type | Educational foundation IRS 501(c)(3) tax exempt [1] |
136006960 [1] | |
Focus | Economics, libertarianism |
Location | |
Coordinates | 33°48′04″N84°23′36″W / 33.8010°N 84.3932°W |
Area served | United States |
Method | literature, lecture, conferences, online courses, multimedia, academic scholarship |
Budget | Revenue: $5,233,293 Expenses: $5,288,134 (FYE March 2018) [2] |
Website | fee |
This article is part of a series on |
Libertarianism in the United States |
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The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is an American conservative, libertarian economic think tank. [3] [4] [5] Founded in 1946 in New York City, FEE is now headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a member of the State Policy Network. [6] [7]
FEE offers publications, lectures, and student workshops promoting free market principles. [8] [9]
FEE states that its mission is to promote principles of "individual liberty, free-market economics, entrepreneurship, private property, high moral character, and limited government." [10] Friedrich Hayek described FEE's goal as "nothing more nor less than the defense of our civilization against intellectual error." [11]
FEE, founded in 1946, is considered the oldest free-market think tank in the United States. [12] An early aim was to roll back policies of the New Deal. [13] FEE opposed the Marshall Plan, Social Security, and minimum wages, among other American social and economic policies. [14]
Its founding by Leonard E. Read, [18] Henry Hazlitt, [19] David Goodrich, [20] Donaldson Brown, [21] Leo Wolman, [22] Fred Rogers Fairchild, [23] Claude E. Robinson, [24] and Jasper Crane [25] followed a capital campaign started in 1945 by Crane, who was a DuPont executive, and Alfred Kohlberg. [26] Early contributors included J. Howard Pew, Inland Steel, Quaker Oats, and Sears. [27] As an "intellectual lighthouse", in Read's words, FEE distinguished itself from other business-supported groups by building up the intellectual framework for laissez-faire capitalism as an ideology. [28]
Read served as president from 1946 until his death in 1983. Perry E. Gresham was an interim president in 1983. [29] The presidency of FEE from 1983 to 1984 was held by John Sparks Sr., from 1984 to 1985 by Bob Love, from 1985 to 1988 by a series of acting presidents, then from 1988 to 1992 by Bruce Evans.[ citation needed ] After retiring from Grove City College where he taught economics, Hans Sennholz served as president from 1992 to 1997. [30] Donald J. Boudreaux served as president from 1997 to 2001, before moving on to chair the Department of Economics at George Mason University. [31] Economist Mark Skousen served as president from 2001 to 2002.[ citation needed ] Author and professor Richard Ebeling served as president from 2003 to 2008.[ citation needed ] From 2008 to 2019, FEE's president was economist, author, and professor Lawrence W. Reed. [32]
FEE first occupied two rooms in New York City's Equitable Building in 1946. [33] Soon after, the organization moved to a residential property in Irvington, New York, purchased in 1946 and which served as its headquarters for the next 68 years. [34] The Foundation sold the Irvington headquarters after the transfer of its operations to Atlanta, Georgia. [35]
Murray Rothbard was influenced by FEE economist Baldy Harper and credited FEE with creating a "crucial open center" for a libertarian movement. [36] [37] Friedrich Hayek saw FEE as part of the inspiration for the formation of the Mont Pelerin Society in 1947, [38] and FEE also provided a financial subsidy to the society. [39] Hayek encouraged Antony Fisher to found the Institute of Economic Affairs after visiting FEE in 1952. [40] Ludwig von Mises had a "long-term association with the Foundation for Economic Education." [41]
According to the 2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report (Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, University of Pennsylvania), FEE is number 55 in the "Top Think Tanks in the United States" (Table 7 – out of 110). [42]
In 2019, Zilvinas Silenas became the president of FEE. [43] He is one of the "most quoted opinion leader[s]" in Lithuania, previously serving as president of the Lithuanian Free Market Institute and expanding its teachings within Lithuanian high schools. [44] [45] The textbook Economics In 31 Hours, co-authored by Silenas, is now read by 80 percent of high school students in Lithuania. [46] [45]
Lawrence W. Reed serves as FEE's President Emeritus. [47] [48] He is the author of Was Jesus a Socialist?. [49]
Jon Miltimore is the managing editor at FEE. [50] [51] Kerry McDonald, an education policy writer, serves as a FEE senior fellow. [52] [53] [54]
FEE offers a variety of programs for high school students, undergraduates, and graduate students. [55] It is known for free summer seminars. [56] [57]
Since 1946, FEE has sponsored public lectures by figures including Ludwig von Mises, [58] F.A. Hayek, [59] Henry Hazlitt, [60] Milton Friedman, [61] James M. Buchanan, [62] Vernon Smith, [63] Walter Williams, [64] F.A. "Baldy" Harper, [65] and William F. Buckley Jr. [66]
The Leonard E. Read Distinguished Alumni Award recognizes FEE alumni whom the alumni board considers to have demonstrated "an exceptional dedication to liberty." Notable recipients have included: [67] [ non-primary source needed ][ permanent dead link ]
FEE published The Freeman magazine from 1954 to 2016. [69] [27] [70] FEE was the original publisher of the essay "I, Pencil", which explored how markets coordinate the disparate activities necessary for economic cooperation. [71]
FEE publishes books, articles, and pamphlets both on paper and digitally that the foundation considers classic works on liberty. [72] These include I, Pencil: My Family Tree by Read, [73] The Law by Bastiat, [74] Anything That's Peaceful by Read, [75] Planned Chaos by Mises, [76] Industry-Wide Bargaining by Wolman, [77] Up from Poverty: Reflections on the Ills of Public Assistance by Sennholz, [78] and The Virtue of Liberty by Machan. [79] [ non-primary source needed ]
A year later, with the help of a few high-powered executives and intellectual conservatives, he established the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), in Irvington-on-Hudson, with the goal of reeducating Americans in classical liberalism.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Anthony Fisher, founded the Institute of Economic Affairs with Hayek's encouragement, following a visit to the Foundation for Economic Education in 1952.
Friedrich August von Hayek, often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian-British economist and political philosopher who made contributions to economics, political philosophy, psychology, intellectual history, and other fields. Hayek shared the 1974 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Gunnar Myrdal for work on money and economic fluctuations, and the interdependence of economic, social and institutional phenomena. His account of how prices communicate information is widely regarded as an important contribution to economics that led to him receiving the prize.
Neoliberalism, also neo-liberalism, is a term used to signify the late-20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism, which had fallen into decline following the Second World War. The term has multiple, competing definitions, and is often used pejoratively. In scholarly use, the term is frequently undefined or used to characterize a vast variety of phenomena.
Henry Stuart Hazlitt was an American journalist who wrote about business and economics for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, The American Mercury, Newsweek, and The New York Times.
The Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics, or Mises Institute, is a nonprofit think tank headquartered in Auburn, Alabama, that is a center for radical libertarian thought and the right-wing paleolibertarian and anarcho-capitalist movements in the United States. It is named after the economist Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) and promotes heterodox Misesian Austrian economics.
The Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) is a neoliberal international organization composed of economists, philosophers, historians, intellectuals and business leaders. The society advocates freedom of expression, free market economic policies and the political values of an open society. Further, the society seeks to discover ways in which the private sector can replace many functions currently provided by government entities. Some scholars deny that the Mont Pelerin Society is neoliberal and claim that it is classical liberal.
Wilhelm Röpke was a German economist and social critic, best known as one of the spiritual fathers of the social market economy. A Professor of Economics, first in Jena, then in Graz, Marburg, Istanbul, and finally Geneva, Röpke theorised and collaborated to organise the post-World War II economic re-awakening of the war-wrecked German economy, deploying a program referred to as ordoliberalism, a more conservative variant of German liberalism.
George Gerald Reisman is an American economist. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at Pepperdine University and the author of The Government Against the Economy (1979), which was praised by both F. A. Hayek and Henry Hazlitt, and Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996). He is known as an advocate of free market or laissez-faire capitalism.
Leonard Edward Read was the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), one of the first free market think tanks in the United States. He wrote 29 books and numerous essays, including the well-known "I, Pencil" (1958).
Hans F. Sennholz was a German-born American Austrian School economist and prolific author who studied under Ludwig von Mises. A Luftwaffe pilot during World War II, he was shot down over North Africa on 31 August 1942, and spent the remainder of the war in a POW camp in the United States.
The Freeman was an American libertarian magazine, formerly published by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). It was founded in 1950 by John Chamberlain, Henry Hazlitt, and Suzanne La Follette. The magazine was purchased by a FEE-owned company in 1954, and FEE took over direct control of the magazine in 1956.
Richard M. Ebeling is an American libertarian author who was the president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) from 2003 to 2008. Ebeling is currently the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.
Lawrence "Larry" W. Reed, also known as Larry Reed, is president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), where he has served as the Humphreys Family Senior Fellow since May 2019. Before joining FEE, Reed served as president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a Midland, Michigan-based free-market think tank. To date, he remains Mackinac's president emeritus.
Philip Mirowski is a historian and philosopher of economic thought at the University of Notre Dame. He received a PhD in Economics from the University of Michigan in 1979.
Ralph Raico was an American libertarian historian of European liberalism and a professor of history at Buffalo State College.
I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read, commonly known as I, Pencil, is an essay by Leonard Read and it was first published in the December 1958 issue of The Freeman.
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was a Ukraine-born Austrian–American Austrian School economist, historian, logician, and sociologist. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the societal contributions of classical liberalism and the power of consumers. He is best known for his work on praxeology studies comparing communism and capitalism.
"The Use of Knowledge in Society" is a scholarly article written by economist Friedrich Hayek, first published in the September 1945 issue of The American Economic Review.
The Colloque Walter Lippmann, was a conference of intellectuals organized in Paris in August 1938 by French philosopher Louis Rougier. After interest in classical liberalism had declined in the 1920s and 1930s, the aim was to construct a new liberalism as a rejection of collectivism, socialism and laissez-faire liberalism. At the meeting, the term neoliberalism was coined by German sociologist and economist Alexander Rüstow, referring to the rejection of the old laissez-faire liberalism.
Floyd Arthur "Baldy" Harper was an American academic, economist and writer who was best known for founding the Institute for Humane Studies in 1961.
Ronald Hamowy was a Canadian academic, known primarily for his contributions to political and social academic fields. At the time of his death, he was professor emeritus of intellectual history at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. Hamowy was closely associated with the political ideology of libertarianism and his writings and scholarship place particular emphasis on individual liberty and the limits of state action in a free society. He is associated with a number of prominent American libertarian organizations.
The original officers were David M. Goodrich, chairman of the Board (he was then also chairman of the board of the B.F. Goodrich Company); Leonard Read, president; myself, vice-president; Fred R. Fairchild, professor of economics at Yale University, secretary; and Claude Robinson, president of the Opinion Research Institute, treasurer. [The] sixteen [original] trustees ... included H.W. Luhnow, president of William Volker & Company; A.C. Mattei, president of Honolulu Oil Corporation; William A. Paton of the University of Michigan; Charles White, president of the Republic Steel Corporation; Leo Wolman, professor of economics at Columbia; Donaldson Brown, former vice-president of General Motors; Jasper Crane, former vice-president of Du Pont; B.E. Hutchinson, chairman of the finance committee of Chrysler Corporation; Bill Matthews, publisher of the Arizona Star; W.C. Mullendore, president of the Southern California Edison Company.