Mises Wire

September’s fiscal surplus was not thanks to tariff revenue. In truth, it was thanks to Americans paying more in income tax. Tariffs were only 5.7 percent of revenue.

Despite the change in the White House, critical race theory is still with us, dominating the academic sectors and being ingrained in progressive culture. We need to better recognize what it is and how it works in order to better refute it.

For more than 60 years, the US government has enforced a trade embargo against Cuba, ostensibly to force the communist government into collapse. The only thing that has collapsed, however, is the logic in the US policy.

The central philosophy of progressivism is that we should be governed by so-called experts. What happens, however, when the “experts” are just plain wrong?

Dr. David Gordon, in today’s Friday Philosophy, reviews Clyde N. Wilson’s, Defending Dixie: Essays in Southern History and Culture. In these essays, Professor Wilson defends secession and the Southern cause.

As a true market entrepreneur, as opposed to a political entrepreneur, James J. Hill successfully built a transcontinental railroad, outcompeting his government-subsidized competitors.

Once again, the Trump administration’s “dealmaking” on international trade has blown up, this time pulling the rug from under US soybean farmers. This isn’t the first trade policy fiasco, nor will it be the last.

The concept of “planned obsolescence” makes no economic sense and is often an excuse for governments to harass and shake down innovative entrepreneurs. Much of so-called planned obsolescence is really entrepreneurship at work improving products for users and consumers.

The governmental response to the covid pandemic was to cripple the economy. To compensate for the damage, the Federal Reserve unleashed massive inflation in an attempt to do what the Fed always does in a crisis: bail out the economic actors.

The people of Iran suffer not only from authoritarian rule, but they also are victims of an economy in which the authoritarian rulers engage in central economic planning that is destroying the economy. It’s an economy based upon plunder, not production.