With recent DC politicking on both the Export-Import Bank and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we revisit Ron Paul’s 1981 essay “The Case for Free Trade“ which explains the basics of truly free trade: 

Although we think of ourselves as a free-trading nation, it takes more than 700 pages just to list all the tariffs on imported goods, and another 400 to inventory all the non-tariff restraints, such as quotas and “orderly marketing agreements.”

There’s a popular misconception that giving tax breaks to industries is the same as subsidizing them. Sadly, like many economic myths, this one just won’t die.

The video game industry offers a recent example. Critics have been arguing for years that US game developers are given unfair advantages and “subsidies” through a range of state and federal tax breaks that lower the cost of game design and artificially prop up production.

Argentina will hold elections this year, and a number of provinces will be electing governors. Buenos Aires, the capital city, is holding elections for mayor, and Mauricio Macri, who is stepping down as mayor, is a favorite to become the next president. Toward the end of the year, a presidential election will be held and Cristina Kirchner, after two consecutive mandates, will have to step down because she cannot be re-elected.

May 21 marks the 1983 death of Eric Hoffer, the “longshoreman philosopher.” He was best known for his 1951 book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, which brilliantly analyzed movements that played prominent roles in world events during his lifetime.

THE AUSTRIAN: How did you first become familiar with the Mises Institute?

In recent years, home price indices have seemed to proliferate. Case-Shiller, of course, has been around for a long time, but over the past decade, additional measures have been marketed aggressively by Trulia, CoreLogic, and Zillow, just to name a few.

Interestingly, Amazon’s list of best sellers in the “monetary policy” category is a veritable parade of anti-Fed and anti-central bank books. Having not read all of them, I certainly can’t endorse all of them, and many of them surely contain questionable economics and fanciful claims about central banks.

From Chapter 16 of An Austrian Perspective on Economic Thought by Murray Rothbard: 

Adam Smith (1723-90) is a mystery in a puzzle wrapped in an enigma. The mystery is the enormous and unprecedented gap between Smith’s exalted reputation and the reality of his dubious contribution to economic thought.

Is there a greater tragedy imaginable than that, in our endeavour consciously to shape our future in accordance with high ideals, we should in fact unwittingly produce the very opposite of what we have been striving for? — F. A. Hayek