Since 2011 (and possibly before), Donad Trump, a “candidate” for the GOP nomination, has been been advocating for harsh trade measures against China, even once advocating a 25% tariff on Chinese goods.
In an interview with CNBC today Danielle DiMartino Booth, a former adviser to recently retired Dallas Fed president Dick Fisher, refers to Ludwig von Mises as ”my long-departed hero.” She notes that Mises ”coined the term malinvestment” and “wrote about it extensively.” She characterizes the housing crisis as a “very identifiable bubble” that was “an outlet for the malinvestment” caused by easy money.
According to Milton Friedman’s Plucking Model, economies follow a trend, and are “plucked” temporarily downward by busts, before returning to the trend. Today, many scholars use this theory to argue against Austrian Business Cycle Theory. But in recent years, this theory has failed to reflect the data. Ryan Murphy explains in the Spring 2015 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics:
Business is often portrayed as being crude and cruel. According to the popular narrative — the Charles Dickens view of the world — businesses are filled with cold-hearted scrooges who value profits more than people. This is then contrasted with the kindness and altruism of charities, non-profits, and governments, which are all supposedly created to help people. Charity, in particular, is seen as ethically superior to business. After all, what could make a greater impact on the world than giving to the needy?
The new encyclical from Pope Francis, due to be officially released tomorrow, is sure to contain at least one claim that the rich are somehow getting rich off the backs of the poor. On a certain level, this is no doubt true: the wealthy are more able to influence state institutions, and are thus more readily able to use state powers — such as taxation and regulation — to exploit others to their own benefit. But that’s not what Francis means. Francis means that markets are bad for the poor.
Robert Higgs writes:
The Mises Institute has kindly agreed to accept my books, research files (for projects undertaken since about 1980), and professional correspondence since about 1970 and to transport these things and house them in its library and archives in Auburn. I am packing the boxes now, and the task is bittersweet. The books, accumulated over some 50 years of study, teaching, research, and consulting, amount to several thousand.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of translator Tatsuya Iwakura, Mises’s book Socialism is now available in a Japanese translation. It is available here on Amazon.
