Mises Wire

Is Britain poorer than Mississippi? Taking into account welfare benefits and taxes, the answer appears to be yes, and it's yes for many other European countries as well.

The Trump administration continues its assault on the First Amendment and the rights of dissenters. The latest casualty is a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University who was arrested by US authorities because she wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper critical of Israel.

Economists like to claim that expectations of more inflation lead to, well, more inflation. Such beliefs ignore the fact that inflation is an increase in the money supply and that general price increases result from fractional reserve-created monetary expansion.

Warren Buffett is well-known for his investment acumen, and he often makes public statements in favor of capitalism. But his loyalty to the fiat monetary system undermines everything else that he claims to represent.

Richard Cobden was a British champion of laissez-faire who served in Parliament. While there, he led to successful campaign to repeal the Corn Laws, which led to British free trade.

While Ben Bernanke has accused free market and sound money advocates of pursuing “discredited” systems, he and his lieutenants were following a truly discredited way of thinking: socialism. The man who supposedly “saved the world” actually destabilized it.

Western elites repeatedly call for “reparations” payments to former Western colonies ostensibly to lift them from poverty. By turning these countries into large welfare recipients, these elites perpetuate the very poverty they claim to decry.

Lack of products that precisely match skin tones are often said to be evidence of “white privilege,” yet the market division of labor provides the basis for very specific goods and services.

Britain‘s new populist party, Reform UK, has done well in the polls but is embarking on head-scratching proposals to deal with energy issues. Instead of pushing market reforms, RUK is proposing a mix of subsidies, taxes, and prohibition to respond to high energy prices.

An enduring myth among American historians is that President Hoover‘s response to the Depression was to let the free market work. This is totally false.