Mark Thornton speaks with Albert Lu about the recent violence in Ferguson and Baltimore and what can be done. Dr. Thornton discusses this in his most recent article, found here. 

The economics profession today continues to face mounting criticism for its failure to predict and explain economic crises.

Today’s is Joe Salerno’s birthday. He is an outstanding Austrian economist and the Academic Vice-President of the Mises Institute. Murray Rothbard said of Joe that he “has done remarkably creative work in the history of economic thought.”He has made major contribution to monetary theory, Austrian business cycle theory, the nature of entrepreneurship, and price theory. In pioneering work, he showed how Mises’s socialist calculation argument differed from that of Hayek. He is a zealous defender of the free market, ever ready to apply Austrian insights to current problems.

With the victory of the Conservatives in last week’s British election, the future of both the European Union and the United Kingdom looks more doubtful.

Mises Daily Friday by Christopher Casey: 

It is now commonplace for governments to measure economic prosperity with GDP metrics. Numerous arbitrary rules and faulty assumptions behind these measures, however, skew our view of how economies grow and living standards improve.

Mises Daily Thursday by Christopher J. O’Connell:

Some now blame employers that don’t pay a “living wage” for the fact that so many people receive welfare payments. So, the politicians want to tax employers for every minimum wage employee they hire. Needless to say, this won’t solve the problem.

When prepping for a recent presentation about my book, Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies, it struck me that it can help explain why those committed to liberty often have a hard time winning others over to our understanding of the potential of free people.

GDP purports to measure economic activity while largely divorcing itself from the quality, profitability, depth, breadth, improvement, advancement, and rationalization of goods and services provided.