According to Ludwig von Mises,

The massive tax breaks, privileges, and subsidies being offered to Amazon by state and local governments across North America for their second headquarters (HQ2) has taken crony capitalism to dizzying heights.

Mark Muro, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution said such offers “speak(s) to the urgency in a lot of places to position themselves in the advanced economy. This looks like a fast way to accelerate one’s entry into the industries of the future.”

Rene Boucher, who attacked Rand Paul at his Kentucky home last year, has pled guilty in Federal court:

At first glance, this appears to be as things should be. Given what information is publicly available, it seems clear that Boucher was the aggressor ,and attacked Paul, although Paul posed no threat to Boucher. 

President Trump’s planned 25 percent tariff on steel imports and 10 percent tariff on aluminum imports may provide a temporary boost for those industries, but the tariffs will do tremendous long-term damage to the American and global economies. Tariffs raise the price of, and reduce demand for, imported goods. Tariffs ensure the preferences of politicians, instead of the preferences of consumers, to determine how resources are allocated. This reduces economic efficiency and living standards.

The Mises Institiute is excited to announce that Dr. Shawn Ritenour is our newest Senior Fellow. Dr. Ritenour is a professor of economics at the historic Grove City College, where he assists with the annual Austrian Student Scholars Conference. 

Dr. Joseph Salerno, academic vice president of the Mises Institute, had this to say about the announcement: 

Elizabeth Warren’s entire career has been based on a lie. I speak, of course, of the notion that she’s some sort of expert on the financial sector.

Listen to Ryan McMaken’s commentary on the Radio Rothbard podcast.

One of the reasons that Donald Trump gives for slapping new protectionist tariffs on steel and aluminum is that it will create manufacturing jobs, and by extension, greatly enhance income growth and standards of living in the United States. 

Marx assumed that “interests” were independent of human ideas and thoughts. He said that socialism was the ideal system for the proletariat. He said class interests determine the thinking of individuals and that this situation causes irreconcilable conflicts between the various classes. Marx then returned to the point at which he had started—namely, that socialism is the ideal state.

One of the great controversies in modern society concerns the necessary and required functions of government. There are few who disagree that if government is to exist then it certainly has the duty and responsibility to secure and protect essential rights of every individual, including the right to life, liberty and honestly acquired property. But there are a wide variety of tasks that the private sector could better provide that many think must be supplied by the government.

When politicians run out of good arguments, their last refuge is often the claim that what they want is “necessary for national defense.” 

Given that there are no good economic arguments in favor of tariffs, it makes sense that the administration has now resorted to the political “national defense” argument instead.