Foundation for Economic Education

American conservative, libertarian economic think tank

The Foundation for Economic Education is the oldest libertarian[1] think tank in the United States of America. It was created by Leonard Read in 1946. It opposed the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, social security and minimum wage.

Creation

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In 1945, Jasper Crane and Alfred Kohlberg [en] complained about the New Deal and said that they wanted laissez-faire capitalism. So Leonard Read, Henry Hazlitt [en], David Goodrich, Donaldson Brown [en], Leo Wolman [en], Fred Rogers Fairchild [en] and Crane decided to create a think tank to teach people about how important economic liberty was.

History

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Leonard Read became the first president of the Foundation for Economic Education in 1946 but in 1983, he died. Someone named Perry E. Gresham took over until FEE (the acronym for Foundation for Economic Education) found a man named John Sparks Senior to replace him. One year later Sparks was replaced by Bob Love. Love left in 1988 and was replaced by Bruce Evans. In 1992, Hans Sennholtz [en] took over. Many different people were president of FEE after him, though from 2008 to 2019 its president was an economist named Lawrence Reed.

References

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  1. Rothbard, Murray; Doherty, Brian [in Spanish] (2010). "I. Setting the Stage; Rothbard's Confidential Memorandum to the Volker Fund, "What Is to Be Done?"; Phase II: The Founding of FEE". In Gordon, David (ed.). Strictly Confidential: The Private Volker Fund Memos of Murray N. Rothbard (PDF). Ludwig von Mises Institute [en]. p. 14. ISBN 9781933550800. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2024-03-18. Retrieved 2024-11-05.