Editor’s note: Jim Manzi is the author of “Uncontrolled: the Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society.” He is the founder and chairman of Applied Predictive Technologies, a global provider of predictive analytics software. Manzi is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at...

The U.S. economy has been doing poorly for so long now that it's easy to get dispirited. But there are several reasons to think 2012 might be a good one for American economic performance.

Indeed, price controls are one of the most pernicious kinds of government regulation. In an ironic twist, they often lead to higher consumer prices over time because they build inefficiencies into economic transactions and decision-making that end up costing consumers more money in the long run.

Arthur Brooks and Jim Manzi are intellectual heirs to Hayek; they are admirably recapturing old truths handed down from America’s Founders and restating them for today’s generation.

Over the past few decades, our economy has undergone some fundamental changes--with the result that the fight for control over the commanding heights of American economic life is still very much with us. And it is a fight that, at least for now, the free-market camp appears to be losing.

Consider the block of the Keystone pipeline expansion in the context of the Administration’s recent pattern of hostility to private sector investments.

The Occupiers are right about American incomes: They've definitely grown more unequal. But this fact presents three inconvenient truths for the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The Obama administration is suing to block the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA. Lawyers at the Department of Justice argue that the marriage of the second and fourth largest wireless carriers will reduce competition. It is clear from the complaint filed by the government that the lawyers at DOJ do not fully understand the present state of wireless competition.