Writes Regina Herzlinger in today’s Wall Street Journal ($): “With the effective passage of the Medicare drug bill, we have just vastly enlarged the health-care sector. This is the one-seventh of our GDP that is run Soviet-style: where the doctors who are uniquely qualified to create and manage health-service businesses are prohibited from owning
The NYT’s Floyd Norris marvels this morning (registration required) at the increased importance of self-employed workers in the government’s rosy employment figures announced this week. These workers, notes Norris, account for 6.6 percent of the workforce, up from 6.1 percent when Bush took office. While there are about 2.25 million fewer jobs
The Motley Fool notes that Congress’ recent overhaul of the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and especially its “No Credit Report Left Behind” provision, is yet another federal override of tougher state laws, such as California’s, where a new state law prohibited banks, insurance companies, and others from sharing their customers’ personal information.
...How much mutual funds should charge, how stock research should be marketed, that the EPA’s regulatory burden is too weak, the New York AG office deserves extorted penalties from securities firms more than the supposedly-harmed investors, the proper distribution of Red Cross funds, the correct result of voluntary labor contracts, which private
Dallas Fed President Bob McTeer, it seems, often breaks from promoting easy money policies in order to write poetry . Here is an excerpt: It would also be swell To be a member of the Committee on Personnel. A master of the universe I wanted to be That was important to me. But I’ve lowered my sights somewhat Since I’ve aged, and gone to pot.
We are often told that 40 million Americans lack health insurance, and that this is a scandal caused by greedy health care providers in the private sector constantly raising health care costs. This simply must be true because it is told to us by Those Who Care. Of course, there is much more to this story than the storytellers let on. Many of the
It’s finally dawning on commentators that the economy is in pretty sorry shape. Stock valuations have fallen 33% since Bush became president; investors are still withdrawing money; consumer sentiment is at historic lows; consumer debt is at historic highs; we face the worst hiring slump in twenty years; production as measured by the GDP minus
Stealing is wrong. It makes private property less secure and requires the diversion of otherwise productive resources to the uses necessary to reduce stealing in the future. Stealing appropriates the fruits of someone else’s labor without his permission. Nonetheless, those who are in the news for pilfering the shuttle debris that rained down
“The way to eternal peace does not lead through strengthening state and central power, as socialism strives for.” Ludwig von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy , p. 96. The market system is based on voluntary exchanges that result in interdependencies that, over time, make war all but impossible. This is why governments that intend to bring about
Many supported the war in Iraq due to the supposed increase in security we will experience at home once Saddam is out of the picture. But who really feels safer in the its aftermath? Why do government’s warnings of impending doom seem to be increasing rather than decreasing? Why has the government even put up a new website ( www.ready.gov ) that
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.