Mises Wire

The modern progressive narratives claim that the wealth of the West and especially of the USA was built upon the backs of slaves. In fact, slavery retarded economic growth.

What is important is not the types and number of goods that sit on store shelves. It is why and how they got there.

While Austrian economists criticize the neoclassicals for their models' use of untrue assumptions, critics have turned the same criticism against the Austrians for their use of the evenly rotating economy.

The standard line is that the Federal Reserve System has two mandates, keep unemployment low and create price stability. Mark Thornton notes that the real agenda is found elsewhere.

Saturday's world-wide demonstrations calling for the release of Julian Assange might go unheeded by American political elites, but that does not diminish this simple truth: Assange is being punished for exposing lies and lawbreaking by the U.S. Government.

Anyone who has taken a Keynesian-based macroeconomics course remembers the equation of exchange: MV = PY. This equation, however, is buried in fallacious economic thinking.

Proponents of socialism claim that it promotes ownership "by the people." Yet the people that actually control resources and production are not the same people who allegedly are the "rightful owners" in society

Progressives are fond of telling us that we are under a "social contract" with the government, in effect justifying whatever abuses authorities inflict. Putting up with massive inflation is the latest iteration of this so-called contract.

The US dollar is not the world's "reserve" currency because of responsibility on behalf of the monetary authorities. Instead, the dollar's "strength" wages from the USA's self-appointed role as the world's protector.

Sound economic reasoning highlights a major difference between social sciences and the natural sciences. We cannot rely on observation and measurement to gain understanding of social phenomena.