One of the most consistent themes through the works of Ludwig von Mises is the role ideas play in shaping society. As he wrote in Theory and History:

It’s a slow week for the Fed as they gear up for next week’s FOMC meeting and subsequent announcement. In the days ahead, there will be much commentary about whether or not the Fed is going to raise rates.

I saw a small sign stuck in the grass near the side of a road where I live in Orlando that I have never seen before. I wrote down the text on the sign so I could remember it. It simply said:

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President Donald Trump’s proposed budget has generated hysteria among the American left. Prominent progressives have accused the president and his allies of wanting to kill children, senior citizens, and other vulnerable Americans. The reaction of the president’s allies — including some conservatives who should know better — is equally detached from reality as they hail Trump for launching a major assault on the welfare state and making the hard choices necessary to balance the budget.

Reason is man’s particular and characteristic feature. There is no need for praxeology to raise the question whether reason is a suitable tool for the cognition of ultimate and absolute truth. It deals with reason only as far as it enables man to act.

All those objects which are the substratum of human sensation, perception, and observation also pass before the senses of animals. But man alone has the faculty of transforming sensuous stimuli into observation and experience. And man alone can arrange his various observations and experiences into a coherent system.

Citing U.S. Department of Energy data, the New York Times recently reported that the solar industry employs far more Americans than wind or coal: 374,000 in solar versus 100,000 in wind and 160,000 in coal mining and coal-fired power generation. Only the natural gas sector employs more people: 398,000 workers in gas production, electricity generation, home heating and petrochemicals.

There are currently three open Federal Reserve Board of Governors positions and the New York Times reports that Trump is ready to nominate the following two:

The expected nominees include Randal K. Quarles, a Treasury Department official in the George W. Bush administration, and Marvin Goodfriend, a former Fed official who is now a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University.

One of the most influential theories in contemporary political philosophy is “luck egalitarianism.” The late G.A. Cohen stated the position in this way, in his Rescuing Justice and Equality (Harvard, 2008):

In Chapter 9 of Man, Economy and State, Murray Rothbard takes on the valuation of land. Robert Murphy discussed Rothbard’s analysis in a 2011 piece for mises.org, writing that he had covered this chapter in a Mises Academy class, and that the discussion of land prices “is an illuminating topic because it involves capitalization and entrepreneurship, two areas where Austrians have made seminal contributions to economic theory.”