One of the Ten Commandments is “thou shalt not steal,” and theft is generally condemned in most religions, yet our religious leaders and followers have essentially turned a blind eye to government theft.

Based on a policy of envy, Bernie Sanders, for example, has bluntly stated he intends to tax the rich to fund his programs, as though the word rich itself justifies theft. The current crop of other democratic candidates is offering a beehive of free programs without any real discussion on how to pay for them.

At least since the time of Socrates, teachers have asked questions of students to elicit critical thought, evoke ideas and expose presuppositions. That has been part of my professor toolkit as well. But with the current political environment, particularly the Democratic nomination follies, reminding me of Will Rogers’s quip that “If we got one-tenth of what was promised to us … there wouldn’t be any inducement to go to heaven,” I have found that asking one of my favorite public finance (economics of government) questions has become even more important.

September 2019 marks 70 years since the appearance of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, one of the truly great “classics” of modern economics. Too often a “classic” means a famous book considered to have made important contributions to some field of study and that is reverentially referred to but is unfortunately rarely ever read any-more.

A slight strengthening in the momentum of consumer expenditure has prompted many commentators to suggest that as long as the US consumer continues to spend there is no risk of a recession ahead. The yearly growth rate of consumer expenditure at current prices stood at 4.1% in July against 4% in June.

Notwithstanding still buoyant consumer expenditure, commentators have expressed concern due to a fall in the consumer sentiment index as compiled by the University of Michigan. The sentiment index fell to 89.8 in August from 98.4 in July and 96.2 in August last year.

John Cochrane has an entertaining and informative blog called “The Grumpy Economist,” offering insights centered in the Chicago School approach that nonetheless will resonate with the Austrian reader. However, in a recent post Cochrane erroneously claimed that people living in high-rent areas of California were effectively using a different currency than other Americans.

The US Constitution never granted the federal government authority to create a central bank. The Founders, having lived through hyperinflation themselves, understood that government should never have a printing press at its disposal. But from the very beginning of America’s founding, the desire for a crony central bank was strong.

In today’s political discussion, one of the fundamental principles our society is built on has been on the defense: private property rights and the protection of such rights. Just take the current debate about the housing shortage in Germany as a prime example. A very prominent policy proposal is flat-out expropriation of housing. Another one is the limitation of ownership of residential apartments.

The Macro Problem of Microtransactions: The Self-regulatory Challenges of Video Game Loot Boxes by Matthew McCaffrey has been published as a case study for Harvard Business Review.