Now that I have your attention, rest assured that even when John Kenneth Galbraith got something right, he got it wrong. One of the signature ideas for which Galbraith is known is the Dependence Effect, which states that advertising convinces people that they need things that they don’t really need. In Galbraith’s own words, “If the individual’s wants are urgent, they must be original with himself. They cannot be urgent if they must be contrived for him. ... One cannot defend production as satisfying wants if that production creates the wants. ...

We begin our analysis of the legal machinations of the NSA by looking at the secret court system which supposedly practices judicial oversight over the agency.

In a recent Mises Daily article, Julian Adorney noted that a central tenet of the gospel of social democracy is that the majority of the people are too stupid to buy or consume the “correct” products and services without government diktat, but that when it comes to voting, the opinions of the majority are infallible and never to be questioned.

1. Total Fed assets increased by 400%.
2. The Fed increased its holdings of U.S. Treasury debt by almost $2 trillion, or over 200%.
3. The Fed now owns over $1.5 trillion of mortgage-backed securities that the private banking system wants nothing to do with.
4. The Fed is perilously close to balance sheet insolvency.

Joe Salerno dismantles the Council of Economic Advisers’ latest report touting the success of the 2009 stimulus, five years later. Dr. Salerno is the Mises Institute’s Academic Vice President

In this video, Ron Paul notes what is obvious to any actual libertarian: US intervention in Ukraine is a horrible idea. But at 2:45 he also notes that it would probably be prudent for the Ukrainians to pursue a policy of “separation” into smaller units of government. In this case, of course, the logical thing do would be to decentralize into one at least pro-Western country and at least one pro-Russian country.

In The Law Frédéric Bastiat presents the irrefutable maxim that man’s rights exist prior to the formation of the state and that, therefore, the collective action of the state cannot conflict with man’s prior rights.

Success is its own reward, but sometimes it also means punishment. In few instances is this more apparent than with medal winners in Sochi.

Athletes are trying their hardest to stand atop the podium and to do so they have some important motivators on their side. Cheering crowds and the promise of sponsorship riches all push forward athletes to perform well. Unfortunately, for American athletes there is the ever-present threat of taxes ready to punish those athletes who perform a little “too well”.

Contrary to a certain nostalgic nationalist myth that still endures, the US Constitution as first conceived was never intended to limit government power. The primary purpose of the Convention of 1787 was to increase federal power, as the older constitution of 1776 (i.e., the Articles of Confederation) was regarded by centralizers as being too “weak.” The older constitution was built on a consensus model, and required acquiescence from a supermajority of member states to do much.