“Our greatest enemy today, in short, is the economic illiteracy and confusion on the part of those who insist on “planning,” “stabilizing,” and straitjacketing the economy and who have the political power to do it.” So wrote Henry Hazlitt in 1946, words that sadly retain their relevancy today. The consequences of this pervasive fallacy takes many forms. Ryan McMaken this week highlighted how soaring university tuition is fueled largely by a government fueled boom in student loans, while Paul-Martin Foss highlighted the alarming signals coming from international shipping. Around the world, people are coming to realize what Austrians have long warned, that the increasingly absurd policies of central banks offer no hope for true, sustainable economic growth. Sadly there is a firmer grasp of economics to be found in a Harry Potter novel, than the halls of the Federal Reserve.
Mises Weekends this week focuses on the true foundations for economic prosperity: innovation and entrepreneurship. At last week’s AERC, Hunter Hastings — a leading business and marketing consultant — discussed how technology breakthroughs and smart machines can power a new age of individualism.
And in case you missed any of them, here are this week’s featured Mises Daily articles and some of our most popular articles at Mises Wire:
- Keynes in 1939: The Coming War Will Solve Our Unemployment Program by Carmen Elena Dorobăț
- And So It Begins… Negative Interest Rates Trickle Down in Japan by Paul-Martin Foss
- Rothbard: Essentials of Money and Inflation by Murray N. Rothbard
- The Fed’s Firepower by Jonathan Newman
- Economists as Modern Astrologers by Ryan McMaken
- Cash Banned, Freedom Gone by Thorsten Polleit
- Dumb and Dumber – From Negative Interest to Helicopter Money by Paul-Martin Foss
- The Fed Can’t Save Us by Robert Murphy
- Mises: Politics and Liberty by Ludwig von Mises
- The Real Meaning of Competition by Peter Klein
- What Harry Potter Can Teach the Federal Reserve by Tho Bishop
- Mill Power Is Trump’s Card by Joseph Salerno
- Don’t Confuse the Cost of College with the Cost of Education by Ryan McMaken
- Liberty Defined by Ron Paul
- What Would Trump Economics Mean for America? by Mark Thornton
- The Skyscraper Index Meets the Supertanker Index by Paul-Martin Foss
- 30 Years of Mises University by Ryan McMaken
- Three Lessons Learned from Tesla’s Success by Mateusz Machaj
- “Free Stuff” Isn’t All That It’s Cracked Up to Be by Louis Rouanet
- Hazlitt, 1946: Inflation, Deflation, Confusion by Henry Hazlitt
