It is interesting to see how prices emerge in a hyperinflationary environment like see in Venezuela. While the government finally cut its “official” exchange rate of 10 bolivars to the dollar, it continues to vastly overstate the value of its currency.
Venezuela continues to be one of the great humanitarian crises of our times. Every day brings new horrific headlines of starvation, violence, and chaos.
When I started writing popular articles about economics, one of my major motivations was to demonstrate to my undergraduate students that it didn’t require advanced degrees in economics for them to competently evaluate economic policy issues and claims. They could get a long way simply by using careful, logical thinking, and consistently-applied basic economic principles, because those tools reveal most of the errors. I thought of Frédéric Bastiat and Henry Hazlitt as inspirations.
Gun control advocates often point to Australia as an example of how “banning” guns leads to significant declines in homicide rates.
A microeconomics principles class presents professors with the opportunity to at least briefly explain the economic calculation problem. Almost every text spends a page or two on the production function — the relationship between inputs and outputs by a firm.
Here is the relevant data and graphs from one such text.
Often the worst of Washington is a bipartisan affair, but late last night a solid Democratic voting block stopped legislation that would allow terminally ill patients the ability to seek help from non-FDA approved treatments.
Part One: The Essential von Mises
In the world of politics and ideology, we are often presented with but two alternatives, and then are exhorted to make our choice within that loaded framework. In the 1930s, we were told by the Left that we must choose between Communism and Fascism: that these were the only alternatives open to us.
1. The Austrian School
Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) was born on September 29, 1881, in the city of Lemberg (present day Ukraine), then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where his father, Arthur Edler von Mises, a distinguished construction engineer working for the Austrian railroads, was stationed. Growing up in Vienna, Mises entered the University of Vienna at the turn of the century to study for his graduate degree in law and economics. He died October 10, 1973, in New York City.
