The Free Market 14, no. 1 (January 1996) There is no oil in Nashville or sheep in St. Louis, and only the female Baltimore oriole is brown. But that hasn’t stopped the Rams from moving to Missouri, the Cleveland Browns from moving to Baltimore, or the Houston Oilers from moving to Nashville. Pigskin lovers and haters abound, but the ranks of
The Free Market 14, no. 3 (March 1996) Look at the back of your computer monitor, the bottom of your table lamp, or the label on your hair dryer. Chances are you will see the symbol “UL” with a circle around it. It stands for Underwriters Laboratories, a firm headquartered in Northbrook, Ill., and an unsung hero of the market economy. Most
The Free Market 14, no. 6 (June 1996) Hollywood ain’t what it used to be. For the most part—and with known exceptions—the quality and content of today’s movies have plummeted when compared to the Golden Age. With the movies’ parade of sex and violence, they’re an easy target for cultural critics to say capitalism inflicts grave damage on the
The Free Market 14, no. 11 (November 1996) Republicans seemed sincere when they argued against a minimum-wage increase. In their rhetoric they were right: it increases unemployment, especially among the poor, by making work illegal. Even the head of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers denounced the minimum wage—when he was a private
The Free Market 16, no. 4 (April 1998) British Prime Minister Tony Blair apologized for doing “too little” in response to the Irish Potato Famine of the 19th century that killed one million people and brought about the emigration of millions more. But in fact, the English government was guilty of doing too much. Blair’s statement draws attention
The Free Market 17, no. 9 (September 1999) The Mississippi River Basin is the largest river basin in the world, and stretches from New York to Idaho and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. In the course of American history, the river often flooded, but not until 1927 had so many people been killed and left homeless and never had such a large land
The Free Market 17, no. 10 (October 1999) The politics of discrimination have been a major force for statism for decades. Only recently have some politicians yielded to public pressure to pull back from their absurd enforcement of quotas. Californians rescinded their preferential treatment for protected minorities in state colleges. Courts
The Free Market 27, no. 5 (May 2009) John Maynard Keynes often employed flowery language like “animal spirits” and “liquidity trap” to describe things he did not understand. He was, after all, more of a bureaucrat than an economist. In fact, he would best be described as an anti-economist because he eschewed things like supply and demand and
The Free Market 29, no. 4 (April 2011) If we were to take the greatest economists from all ages and judge them on the basis of their theoretical rigor, their influence on economic education, and their impact in support of the free-market economy, then Frédéric Bastiat would be at the top of the list. As Murray N. Rothbard noted: “Bastiat was
The Free Market 31, no. 2 (February 2013) Austerity has been hotly debated as either an elixir or a poison for tough economic times. But what is austerity? Real austerity means that the government and its employees have less money at their disposal. For the economists at the International Monetary Fund, “austerity” may mean spending cuts, but it
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.