Bill Kristol: “I think a lot of the younger Democrats are quite impressive.”

New scholarly work is appearing regularly in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics and the Journal of Libertarian Studies. The QJAE is one of the top international outlets for scholarly research within the Austrian School of economics, publishing high-quality papers on a range of topics within the Austrian School. The JLS, founded by Murray Rothbard, is an interdisciplinary journal advancing the libertarian intellectual tradition. 

The rise of state pensions inevitably coincides with the destruction of peaceful, voluntary, and responsible institutions of civil society. This is no accident. Long before such schemes appear, violence steadily erodes capital through taxation, inflation, and regulation. When the remnants of liberty begin to fade, the state emerges as a self-declared savior, offering a solution to the very crisis it engineered.

There is a certain genius in simplicity and clarity. Conceptual and written clarity is one of the aspects of the writing of Mises and Rothbard that I have appreciated most, even while discussing complex concepts. In teaching economics to laymen, simple examples and illustrations that both correspond with reality (not disanalogies) and communicate concepts with clarity are essential. These examples can be historical, current, or even imaginary.

MCMAKEN: Following the financial crisis of 2008, there never was any sort of real reckoning for mainstream economists, who had totally failed to see the crisis coming or understand its origins. The Austrian School economists, though, immediately understood the problem. What is different about the Austrian School, and how does it give us a little bit of an edge in understanding things better?

I’d like to begin by telling you something about how I founded the Mises Institute in 1982 and what we are trying to accomplish. Thirty-five years ago, when I was contemplating the creation of a Ludwig von Mises institute, the Austrian School of economics—especially its Misesian emphasis—was very much in decline. The number of Misesian economists was so small that all of them knew each other personally and could probably have fit in Mises’s small living room.

The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday voted to again reduce the target policy interest rate by 25 basis points, down to an upper bound of 4.0 percent. The FOMC has now cut the policy rate (i.e., the federal funds rate) five times since September 2024, totaling a reduction in 150 basis points over 13 months.