Mises writes:
All civilizations have up to now been based on private ownership of the means of production. In the past civilization and private ownership have been linked together. If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.
There has been some recent discussion again regarding the usefulness, limits, and problems of the well-known Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measure, which is often presented as a measurement of economic health and growth. For example, Dr. Patrick Newman presented a paper at the 2025 Austrian Economics Research Conference that partially dealt with the origins and problems of GDP. Following this, Dr.
Donald Trump’s tariff policy maneuvers this have made it clear that we live in a country where a single man can impose or suspend taxes at will. Trump has, with little more than social media posts and various strokes of a pen, hiked federal sales taxes on imports (i.e., tariffs) with apparently no limit on the size of these taxes or to which goods they are applied.
“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” President Trump declared last week when he proclaimed a national emergency and imposed the highest tariffs since the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930. US stock markets lost more than $6 trillion in value and fierce controversies are raging over whether Trump is rescuing or ruining the economy.
As the 2024 campaign neared its end, candidate Donald Trump began promising that, if elected, he would support the elimination of income taxes. Shortly after he was sworn in, Trump then began saying he planned to abolish the Internal Revenue Service. The Trump team claimed in each case that it could raise enough tax revenue from tariffs to replace tax revenue from income taxes.
At some point in the early days of the “Virus Era”—my term for the multi-year debacle that we endured from early 2020 through some point in 2023 or 2024—I decided to archive email exchanges with a few friends about this peculiar time in our country’s history.
No White House in my lifetime has been a fount of economic wisdom, and the Donald Trump 2.0 version is taking its place in the Pantheon of economic illiteracy.
