In Defense of Deflation
What Austrians know for sure is this: Deflation can benefit all the people in an economy. But inflation can only benefit those who are massively indebted and inefficient — like governments.
Adventures in Health Care
The US health care system is a complete mess, our % of GDP spending on health care isn’t that surprising given that health care is a super-normal good–meaning roughly that our consumption of health care rises more rapidly than our incomes–and the US is extremely wealthy, and yet it works decently well on some margins. Nationalizing health care, especially in a country that is as politically explosive as the US, will probably shut off even the things American health care does well.
Government Subsidies for Bloggers?
Professor Bollinger obviously distrusts our ability to make choices about the news we wish to read; he is eager to supplant our judgment with his. But who is so wise as to know what is good for all of us?
Disseminating Ideas and Information in the 20th and 21st Centuries
I’m spending today and tomorrow in the Archives at Tuskegee University; I’m working on a handful of projects about racist violence and Southern economic development, and a lot of the data and information I’m using is drawn from work done by scholars at Tuskegee. It has been an interesting study in the differences between how information traveled in 1910 or 1960 and how it travels in 2010.
The English Civil War and the First Libertarian Movement
What counts in history is results, not intentions. Regardless of the motivations of its combatants and propagandists, the English Civil War pushed everyone to take a second look at their assumptions about politics.
The Sunset of the State
Thanks to Stefan and FreeDomainRadio:
Jim Crow: Government Against Market Forces
From page 111 of the 1918-1919 Negro Year Book, published by the Tuskegee Institute and edited by Monroe N. Work:
The New Push for a Global Currency
Under a gold standard, the physical metal is the limit, and the market is the master. Under a global paper system, the paper provides no limit whatsoever. And the politicians are the masters.
Affording the Unemployed
While the unemployment rate continues to hover between 9 and 10 percent, the average amount of time wage earners remain unemployed has skyrocketed to previously unrecorded levels.1 Keynesians fear that a weak fiscal and monetary response will allow the presently cyclically unemployed to become so permanently.
Manuel F. Ayau, 1925-2010
We just received word that Manuel Fr. Ayau died yesterday. He is the founder of Universidad Francisco Marroquin, author of Not a Zero-Sum Game, and a dedicated Misesian fighter for truth. Lew Rockwell wrote about his fight for freedom here. His lasting legacy is a huge presence for Misesian ideas in Latin America and many excellent students all over the world.
