Economics and martial arts? One might be tempted to think that those two things can’t have anything in common. But there are some parallels that we can trace. First of all, both are types of systematic knowledge. The former is the study of human action and interaction with goods and services and the latter is the study of the best way to physically overpower another man. Both are ideas developed throughout millennia subdivided in several different schools or styles.

[I]t’s well past the time to raise a minimum wage that in real terms right now is below where it was when Harry Truman was in office. (Applause) This shouldn’t be an ideological question. It was Adam Smith, the father of free-market economics, who once said, “They who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.” And for those of you who don’t speak old-English – (laughter) – let me translate. It means if you work hard, you should make a decent living.

[Editor’s Note: This is an old interview from the Harvard Political Review, reprinted here for the use of our readers and students.]

The USA Today reports on the skyscraper building mania in New York City. Multiple building have been built or are under construction or planning that reach into the super skyscraper category although no new records heights are planned at this time. This seems like another indicator of the Skyscraper Curse. I explain the theoretical connection between the building of record high skyscrapers and business cycles in this paper.

Mises.org readers were alerted to the housing bubble in Norway in January 2013. It now appears that the bubble is starting to crash.

While some Austrian influenced economists such as Peter Boettke are predicting “With Keynesian Yellen at the Helm, Expect More of the Same,” there are good reasons to believe monetary policy, from a sound money perspective, could get considerably worse than the Bernanke version of “Mondustrial