From the Editors:

Today Scotland votes on a referendum concerning political independence from the United Kingdom.

This is a transcript of Jeff Deist’s interview with Andy Duncan on Mises Weekends.

Jeff Deist: Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to Mises Weekends. I’m your host, Jeff Deist, and I’m very happy to be joined by Andy Duncan. Andy, how are you this evening in the UK?

Andy Duncan: Well, it’s very nice to be with you again, Jeff.

Today would have been the eighty-sixth birthday of JoAnn Rothbard, the beloved wife of Murray Rothbard for forty-two years. In the dedication to America’s Great Depression, he called her “the indispensable framework,”and anyone who knew them could have no doubt why he said this.

Various criticisms have been raised against the Fed, not only from the side favoring the abolition of central banking, but also from the side of those who argue that the Federal Reserve is indispensable for stability.

The teachers’ strike in British Columbia, Canada, is over... almost. On Thursday, 40,000 public school teachers in the province will vote on whether to accept the proposed contract. Neither side got everything it wants, and the main headline is that teachers will receive a 7.25% salary raise over 6 years. The province also pledged to add $100-million to an education fund to benefit BC teachers over the next five years.

Mark Thornton interviewed on PressTV: “The political tensions between the United States and Russia has increased or speeded up the process of which nations are doing business between countries instead of dollars and doing it with their local currencies,” Mark Thornton, Senior Fellow at Mises Institute, told Press TV on Wednesday.

The phrase “incentives matter” is ubiquitous in economics, from undergraduate teaching to economic policy debates. The mantra is especially popular in the growing literature targeted at the general public, which I’ve criticized before for its undue focus on incentives (see here and here).

In light of the upcoming Scottish independence referendum, some quotes by Mises are appropriate. Too bad the Scots’ idea of independence is Salmond and the EU, not Wallace and Bruce.