To illustrate one of the pernicious effects of socialism to my classes, I will often ask students what would happen if I decided to minimize failure by taking away points from the A students and give them to the F students. What happens to the incentives faced by hard-working students who get good grades? What lessons are learned by the
The Church of England has some monopoly power in this area, causing it to lose its focus and ignore the needs of its consumers. The Economist calls for its disestablishment . An excerpt: Establishment brings fewer material advantages to the Church of England these days than the Lutherans, for example, enjoy in much of Scandinavia. And a creeping
The Free Market 26, no. 2 (February 2008) Years of spending, inflating, taxing, and redistributing has left the US economy teetering on a recession that our best and brightest—meaning the ones who created this mess—claim requires a multibillion-dollar economic-relief package to quell fears, promote confidence, and spur recovery. And, one might
From the local paper this morning, a story about the growing trend of new housing developments providing their own sewage treatment facilities on-site. Excerpt: Homebuyers like knowing their rates are protected, particularly in Jefferson County, where county sewer system rates have shot up 329 percent since 1997. Homeowners also like the idea that
Harold Meyerson, writing in the Washington Post, calls for a new New Deal. The old one worked just fine, and current times call for some of the same medicine. Harold says it, and he’s not alone. FDR’s nanny-like visage has been showing up on left-liberal and neocon publications -- web and print -- by folks who don’t understand that their favorite
The Wall Street Journal ‘s Mark Gongloff quotes Lehman economist Ethan Harris in this morning’s “Ahead of the Tape” column: In the rush to enact a timely package, politicians may have stopped a 2008 recession, but they have ignored a risky letdown -- after the election. [The U.S. faces ] another brush with recession in 2009” [for this reason].
It is not a good thing to destroy wealth. Bastiat puts it this way: “Society loses the value of things which are uselessly destroyed.” It sounds like an unexceptional claim. But herein rests the core case against everything the government does. Perhaps, then, we can see why the allegory is not better known. If we took it seriously, we would
The U.S. government’s military ventures in Iraq are now costing $400 million a day--$533 million a day if you add Afghanistan--according to Linda Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz in Sunday’s Washington Post. They write: Why doesn’t the public understand the staggering scale of our expenditures? In part because the administration talks only about the
A mini-controversy in Alabama is repeated, in my forms, around the country. In its current form, it goes like this . A public official from Party A, a member of the state school board, attacks another public official from Party B, a woman who happens to serve in the state legislature while serving as a high official in the state’s two-year college
While Sovereign Wealth Funds have existed for several decades, it has only been in the last few years that their investment schemes have been investigated and scrutinized. While their portfolios and long-term goals vary, one common trait every state-controlled investment fund shares is that the initial seed money came from the pockets of coerced
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.