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On June 29, the German parliament reacted as parliaments normally do when there is a problem, namely, by allowing the government to spend more. In order to respond to the economic difficulties due to the corona epidemic and the government restrictions, it passed a typical Keynesian stimulus package in order to boost aggregate demand.

The COVID-19 pandemic has torn the veil off what we can now can call a “fiat market. It has stripped away all pretense of a true market. Governments and central banks now create both supply and demand. Bailouts and subsidies are handed down so that zombie corporations can produce on the one hand, while welfare, universal basic income, and other handouts are distributed so that citizens can buy the products. Strictly speaking, this is a type of socialism.

According to new jobs data released today by the US Labor Department, total nonfarm employment grew by 4.8 million in June (seasonally adjusted). The gain was even larger (5.1 million) in non–seasonally adjusted totals. 

June’s unemployment rate was 11.1 percent, a drop of 2.2 percent.

It has long been said that the financial and economic education in the public school system is far from perfect. I, as a current high school student, can vouch for that claim. From promoting crazed statist ideologies to nonsensical Keynesian beliefs, the public school system is nothing short of a tool for the state to harness power.

Of all the problems 2020 has given the world, perhaps one of the greatest has been granted by the Fed to a handful of CEOs across the country, that is, if their corporation has a credit rating of junk bond or higher.

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[Editor’s note: this essay was found among Bettina Bien Greaves’s files. A note in her handwriting indicates that it was written in 1944 and that Mises used it in his 1959 seminar.

Robert Nozick’s derivation of a minimal state in the first part of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) has generated a lot of criticism, and you might think there is nothing new to be said about it. I have a new point, though—at any rate, I haven’t seen it discussed—and this is what I’m going to talk about.

The first time governments imposed business closures in the name of fighting the spread of COVID-19, the job market imploded.

Forty million Americans lost their jobs, and at least 20 million of those are still unemployed. Income in America fell to such low levels that federal tax revenues fell by more than 50 percent year over year in April and remained down more than 25 percent in May. These are losses of historic proportions.