Mises Daily

A result of a complex system of subsidies and other government favors, it is unclear that fracking would be sustainable in a truly free marketplace.

Many Americans, perhaps a substantial majority, still believe that labor unions are fundamental to the well-being of workers. In fact, labor unions work to prevent increases in the productivity of workers, which is ultimately the only way to increase real wages.

There is a little-known loophole in federal law that allows for people with disabilities to be employed at wage rates below the minimum wage. Why the exemption? It’s an effort to lessen unemployment among the disabled, and a tacit admission in federal law that minimum wages cause unemployment.

It is a fact that severe poverty has disappeared in the most industrialized countries. The wealth of the first-world welfare states was made possible by those countries’ turn toward free markets in the past. Likewise, the turn toward more free markets in the developing world has reduced poverty there.

Defenders of government coercion often claim that residence within a state’s boundaries imply consent to be taxed and regulated by the state in question. While one can expect to be robbed by the state regardless of where one lives, this is not the same as consenting to be robbed.

Governments don’t like it when neighboring countries offer freedoms not available at home. The presence of a more-free jurisdiction right across the border can lead to out-migration and local demands for similar freedoms in the home territory. So states seek to punish, annex, or persecute their non-conforming neighbors.

Smuggling in America has been around since colonial days and will continue into the foreseeable future. It has played a very prominent role, rather than a subsidiary one, through our history. Indeed it has often played a pivotal role in important events and episodes in American history.

The European Central Bank’s recent move to negative interest rates is a sign that the ECB is hitting the panic button.

Politicians won’t admit that quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus have unquestionably failed to produce a rapid recovery over the past five years.

In 1946, as now, the government held up the threat of deflation to justify a policy of ultra-low interest rates.