Mises Wire

Populist parties have yet to score definitive victories in either the US or in Europe. But these groups aren't going away, either. 

Today would have been Burt Blumert's ninety-second birthday

In an unhampered market, there is no such thing as "excess" consumption of imports. But thanks to the creation of monopoly banks like the Bank of North America, an inflationary expansion of bank credit led to an artificial expansion of imports.

What works in a clinical setting may have totally different outcomes when applied as a matter of "public health." Indeed, one-size-fits-all public health measures can often lead to unintended and unwanted results. 

There are plenty of sound reasons to oppose government minimum wage laws, but there is one objection making the rounds that is based on bad economics and should be avoided, and that’s the "businesses will pass on the costs to consumers" objection.

The claim that the US needs an immense and varied nuclear arsenal "does serve one purpose: it keeps military budgets wondrously high."

Placing thousands of troops on the streets of the nation’s capital could be a ticking time bomb. The longer the National Guard is deployed in Washington, the greater the peril of a Kent State–caliber catastrophe. 

An unheralded work on the Austrian business cycle that rivals the work of the greats is Jesús Huerta de Soto’s Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, which outlines a multistate process of boom and bust. 

Democrats want taxpayer funding for the families of those who died of covid. But, of course, there's no discussion of helping those who died as a result of covid lockdowns, such as those who were denied medical treatment for cancer. 

Centrally planned economies often stick with terrible ideas for many years. But markets can take bad products, learn from them, and turn them into great products that give the public what it wants and needs.