[The following is an excerpt from Jeff Deist’s talk at the Mises Institute’s recent summit in Los Angeles]

Introduction

Those of us who read and enjoy Mises, and he wrote so much about so many things, might well wonder what he would have to say about the state of America and the West in 2019. After all, he was a sociologist and philosopher and political theorist as well as an economist. Surely we could use his perspective today, and so much of what he wrote was prescient and still relevant. 

The money supply growth rate rose in September, rising to an eight-month high.  The last time the growth rate was higher was during February of this year, when the growth rate was 3.19 percent.

The US Census Bureau released new poverty data this month, and California once again has the nation’s highest poverty rate, according to the “Supplemental Poverty Measure.”

According to the SPM, California’s poverty rate in 2018 was 18.1 percent, followed by Louisiana with 16.5 percent, and Florida, with 16.2 percent.

The states with the lowest poverty rates per the period were Iowa at 6.7 percent, Minnesota at 7 percent, and Kansas at 7.8 percent.

Although the roughly two million affected residents of Northern California are recovering from the rolling blackouts imposed by utility PG&E, the company has warned that these “fire safety outages” may be periodically required for another decade.

Both economic decisions and political decisions involve choices and tradeoffs. The difference is that economic decisions are ultimately informed and rely upon monetary prices, revenues and costs. Political decisions, meanwhile, do not depend on market outcomes—they can be based on love, legacy, favors, or establishing power relations.