I was going through the textbook for my economics principles course recently, thinking about how I could better reconcile the fact that since only individuals choose, the logic of economics is about individual choices facing the fact of scarcity. Yet macroeconomics is generally presented directly in terms of aggregates and how to control them, as if aggregates were the relevant measures.

These days politico-economic trends in the U.S. provide proponents of the free society very little to cheer about.  But here is a bit of news that should elicit a hearty “YIPPEE” from free-market advocates.  According to data recently released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, union membership in 2014 dropped to 11.1% of the labor force, its lowest rate in 100 years.   Union membership in the private sector now stands at 6.6%, down from 35% in the mid-1950s.

Agricultural economist Jayson Lusk has a nice discussion of the US government’s SNAP (”food stamps”) program that nicely illustrates Mises’s theory of interventionism. Mises argued that government interventions such as price controls, subsidies, and other regulations not only fail to achieve their stated aims, but also generate unanticipated side-effects, calling for further interventions

Paul-Martin Foss at the Carl Menger Center for the Study of Money and Banking has penned a nice retort to Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher, who recently criticized Rand Paul’s introduction of an “Audit the Fed” bill in the US Senate.