Mises Daily

Benjamin Franklin once remarked that the only certain things in life are death and taxes. Modern entitlement programs have created a situation in which efforts to avoid death will make tax burdens unbearable.

"In working with leftists against the draft and the Vietnam War," writes Rothbard in this passionate article, "I never had the absurd notion of converting them to capitalism, either sneakily (as Efron would have it) or otherwise.... We are living in the real world, where <em>facts</em> are important."

Many academic economists are beginning to worry: Could the Federal Reserve itself become insolvent? In this article I'll explain these fears and I'll argue that the Fed, with its printing press, cannot really go bankrupt the way other corporations can.

Gold in the money survived all the way to Nixon, and it was he who finally drove the stake in once and for all. That was supposed to be the end of it, and the beginning of the glorious new age of paper prosperity.

The connotation of unreality that the word has acquired follows from the fact that every utopia ignores the central operating lever of man: he seeks to satisfy his desires with the least expenditure of effort.

When he was in his 20s, having newly discovered libertarian ideas, having read Rand, Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, and others, having met Rothbard and conversed with him at length, Nozick was fired up with excitement.

A pure gold standard is not conducive to business cycles. Contrary to mainstream economists, it is the attempts of the central banks to bring about price stability and full employment that set in motion the menace of boom-bust cycles.

The number of inhabitants in a state depends on their means of subsistence. The means of subsistence depend on the method of cultivating the soil, and this method depends chiefly on the taste, desires, and manner of living of the property owners.

The national furor over the TSA's new procedures has elicited the typical response from the bureaucracy and its apologists. These invasive scans and "enhanced pat-downs" are for your own good. You don't want another attack, do you?

It is amazing that this system, jerrybuilt at Bretton Woods in 1944, is not only still tolerated but regarded as practically sacrosanct. Its paternity was not auspicious. Its two fathers were Harry Dexter White of the United States and Lord Keynes of England.