Free Market

The Free Market is the monthly newsletter of the Mises Institute featuring articles of application of the Austrian and market viewpoint.

Subscribe for free here.

Displaying 161 - 180 of 731
Christopher Westley

Last year, the governor of Alabama proposed and then overwhelmingly lost a bitter referendum to increase taxes and boost revenue. Voters rightly saw the campaign as a slick attempt to expand the public sector’s power, prestige, and wealth transfers by increasing the degree of legal plunder in Alabama’s tax system.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Mises was right that unions have always been a primary source of anti-capitalistic propaganda. But since he wrote Human Action, American unions have also been at the forefront of lobbying efforts on behalf of the regulation and taxation of business—of capital—that has severely hampered the market economy, making everyone, including unionists, worse off economically.

Daniel J. D'Amico

Colleges offer their students a taste of reality by simulating the political atmosphere of society with the presence of student government associations (SGAs). The election process succeeds in mimicking many aspects of real political campaigns: the cutthroat environment of campaign promises combined with the relentless schmoozing of constituencies, and mindless pride.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

Today we demand that the price of computers and bandwidth fall month by month but we oddly expect the prices of many other goods to constantly rise (houses, education, health care, taxes). And so we adjust our expectations accordingly. It takes some imagination to see how the system would work if we were guaranteed our right to deflation.

Robert P. Murphy

With the recent rate hike, the mainstream press obediently parrots the macroeconomic analysis offered by our friendly central planners at the Federal Reserve. The average citizen knows that he or she is not nearly smart enough to understand the complex interrelationships of various price indices, yield curves, consumer confidence, and so forth—that’s Greenspan’s job.

Ludwig von Mises

Critics level two charges against capitalism: First, they say, that the possession of a motor car, a television set, and a refrigera­tor does not make a man happy. Secondly, they add that there are still people who own none of these gadg­ets. Both propositions are correct, but they do not cast blame upon the capitalistic system of social cooperation.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

My impression is that we are now working with the most educated and most exposed generation ever. Rather than going through grade school and high school with only appointed texts, the students have the opportunity to seek out other points of view.

Mark Thornton

Booming home prices and record low interest rates are allowing homeowners to refinance their mortgages, "extract equity" to increase their spending, and lower their monthly payment! As one loan officer explained to me: "It’s almost too good to be true."

Murray N. Rothbard

In recent years an increasing number of economists have understandably become disillusioned by the inflationary record of fiat currencies. They have therefore concluded that leaving the government and its central bank power to fine tune the money supply, but abjuring them to use that power wisely in accordance with various rules, is simply leaving the fox in charge of the proverbial henhouse.

Gil Guillory

With the ousting of head man Saddam Hussein, the production of security completely collapsed. While I saw burgeoning businesses in fence building, satellite dish installations, used car sales, and agriculture in southern Iraq, the production of security floundered.

Art Carden

Popular contempt for the market is distressing. Few institutions are so universally reviled, and perhaps fewer institutions are so universally misunderstood.

William L. Anderson

Given the reality that markets are self-regulating, how did the US economy (not to mention economies of other nations) become a morass of hundreds of thousands of state, local, and federal regulations that govern things to the minutest detail? Furthermore, why have we not seen a revolt of business owners and consumers alike, who ultimately pay the price for the modern regulatory state? The answer is both simple— and complex.

Clifford F. Thies

That some factors of production are mobile, says the new protectionist, "proves" that free trade is not as attractive as (supposedly) David Ricardo argued. But factor mobility is not new. It has long been accepted by economists that either goods or people (and other factors of production) move.