The Free Market 18, no. 3 (March 2000) America’ s first wage and price controls were enacted in Massachusetts, a little more than a hundred years after the first pilgrims arrived. The opportunities available in the New World combined with a strong work ethic were raising the wages of working men, to the consternation of their employers. In 1630,
Volume 8, No. 4 (Winter 2005) During the late nineteenth century, when silver agitation threatened the gold standard in the United States, gold bonds offered investors some protection from the uncertainties concerning the monetary standard in the United States. Gold bonds, therefore, sold at a premium relative to similar currency bonds. This
Volume 12, Number 4 (2009) This paper tracks the economic and political developments in the state of Kentucky that led up to the murder, trial, and execution constituting “The Kentucky Tragedy,” and to a second murder involving a son of the Governor of the state. In doing this, the paper ties the developments in money, banking, and the economy
The Free Market 12, no. 7 (July 1994) Federal bureaucrats think they, not the financial markets should direct investment spending. They want to rebuild “infrastructure,” fund space stations, install magnetic supertrains, and set up information highways (or redistribute the existing ones). That’s what President Clinton means when he says he’ll
A review of Stephen E. Ambrose, Nothing Like It in the World. The Men who built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869 . New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. Ambrose is an accomplished military and presidential historian, best known for his books on Dwight D. Eisenhower and the American GI during WWII. He wrote this book on a piece of railroad
With all the recent news about con men operating phony businesses, I was struck by a curious item I came across on eBay. It was a $3 bill from the Salem & Philadelphia Manufacturing Company of New Jersey, dated 1828. It wasn’t the $3 amount of the note that caught my attention, as notes from that period came in many amounts that have long since
There’s a movement afoot to place a portrait of our nation’s fortieth President, Ronald Reagan, onto one of the denominations of our currency. The last two changes, putting first Susan B. Anthony’s countenance, and then Sacagawea’s on the $1 coin, proved to be failures. The prior two changes, putting President John F. Kennedy’s face on the 50¢
At my supermarket, there’s a machine that says “convert your coins into money,” for which service it charges “only” 3 percent. Aren’t coins already money? And, why should it cost money to convert one form of money into another form? As to whether coins are or are not money, perhaps it depends on their legal tender status. That is, how many coins
Following the Panic of 1819, the state of Kentucky sought to provide relief from the suddenly harsh burden of debt on many of its citizens, by creating the Bank of the Commonwealth, a new kind of bank, one completely owned by the state government and not at all bothered by specie, and by suspending foreclosure for up to two years upon the tender
Can states secede? There are three levels on which this question can be answered: the inalienable right of secession , the international law of secession , and the US law of secession . All three say yes. The Inalienable Right of Secession The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America invokes the self-evident truths that all men
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.