[ Independent Review (2004)] Many of us who believe that governments continue to grow relentlessly, at least in the economically advanced countries, have been criticized by analysts who claim that in fact the growth of government has petered out or slowed substantially. The latter group perceives us to be needlessly alarmed and faults us for a
Contemporary social and economic affairs take place within a bewildering complex of regulatory restrictions and requirements. Already profuse beyond comprehension, the labyrinth grows ever more extensive. In the United States, at the federal level alone, the 4,000 to 5,000 new final rules put in place each year require some 20,000 pages of the
[ The Transformation of the American Economy, 1865–1914 ] This book, my first, was composed for the most part in 1969 and 1970 and published in 1971, exactly forty years ago. At that time, I was in my mid-twenties and had just completed my work for the PhD degree in economics at the Johns Hopkins University. At Hopkins, I had been trained
Before 1929, the US government did not systematically attempt to moderate or reverse general business contractions. Recovery usually came about spontaneously within the market system within a year or two. Exceptions to this rule, especially the protracted slump of the mid-1890s, reflected major uncertainties about the government’s adherence to the
[Day 28 of Robert Wenzel’s 30-day reading list that will lead you to become a knowledgeable libertarian, this interview of Robert Higgs by Ángel Martín appeared (in Spanish translation) in La Escuela Austriaca desde Adentro II: Historias e ideas de sus pensadores , ed. Adrián Ravier (Madrid: Unión Editorial, 2011).] How did you come to know
“Political leaders are much more ambitious than gangsters.” [ The Independent Review , Spring 1997] Public-choice analysts proceed on the assumption that individuals do not differ as they participate in private and public affairs. The man who shops for groceries, they say, is the same man who votes. The woman who decides where to invest her
Commentators and pundits, some of whom ought to know better, continue to harp on the idea that the recession persists because consumers are not spending. Every Keynesian seems to believe that because consumers are in a dreadful funk, only government stimulus spending can rescue the moribund economy, given (to them, at least) that investors will
Private investment is the most important driver of economic progress. Entrepreneurs need new structures, equipment, and software to produce new products, to produce existing products at lower cost, and to make use of new technology that requires embodiment in machinery, plant layouts, and other aspects of the existing capital stock. When the rate
In the 1930s and 1940s, when the modern system of national income and product accounts (NIPA) was being developed, the scope of national product was a hotly debated issue. No issue stirred more debate than the question, Should government product be included in gross product? Simon Kuznets (Nobel laureate in economic sciences, 1971), the most
[This talk was the Arthur M. Krolman Lecture at the 30th Anniversary Supporters Summit of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Callaway Gardens, Georgia, on October 26, 2012. Click here to watch the video of this talk.] Many people are misled by formalities. They assume, for example, that the United States went to war against Germany and Japan only
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.