THE AUSTRIAN: As Austrians, we’re often noting that we seek to explain and describe economic cycles, and not necessarily predict what’s going to happen next week. So, how would you describe and explain the state of the economy right now?

If everyone could just have a college degree imagine how prosperous America would be? That’s the idea behind free community college tuition and cheap government insured student loan debt. There is no sense stopping at undergraduate, maybe we should all have a law degree?

If guilt is the best you have to offer a customer, you probably don’t have that much to offer a customer.

When I walk into Walmart I know I will be able to get a wide selection of products, I will be able to get them cheap, and I will be able to get them with very little customer support or hassle. When I want that, it feels great. Fast, simple, cheap. 

In her new book What Happened, Hillary Clinton explains why she lost the presidential election last year.

The New York Times recently carried an interesti

Minimum wage laws are often put forward as regulations that help everyone. If anyone is hurt, it is wealthy capitalists who can afford to lose a little money. Unfortunately, this is rarely the reality. In order to decode the impact of minimum wage laws, one has to examine the effects on multiple levels, examining both the seen and the unseen consequences. Increases in wages have to be paid for somehow, and given the interdependent relationship of a market, there are three major players who are impacted by minimum wages: employers, employees, and the consumers.

The value of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, just like any other kind of money, comes fundamentally from what you can do with it. As a follow up to What Backs Bitcoin, I want to dig into that value.

The idea, which comes from Austrian economist Carl Menger, is that just as a shovel’s value comes from its ability to dig, a currency’s value comes from its ability to help you do two things: transactions and savings.

The motives of net neutrality advocates differ. But the common thread among them is a general belief that internet service providers (ISPs) face no serious competition, and therefore overcharge both their supply-side (i.e., Netflix) and demand-side (internet users) customers and generally treat customers poorly.

In other words, ISPs have “natural monopolies” that allow them to rake in profits without improving service to customers or dealing with different customer-types in an equitable manner.