The Social Security Scam

Parents don’t lay awake at night trying to figure out how to repay the money they loaned themselves. The government, however, thinks that it makes perfect sense to collect $100 of tax revenue, spend the $100, and then declare that it now owes itself $100. This scheme is not limited to Social Security. Currently, federal intragovernmental debt for all programs totals $4.3 trillion.

Playing Chicken in Memphis

Competition means that unexploited profit opportunities do not stay unexploited for very long. If Fowler Foods is overlooking a robust market for grilled chicken in Memphis, then I encourage the company’s critics to stop squawking, enter the market, and show them the error of their ways by earning profits in the market for grilled chicken.

Whose Right Is It, Anyway?

Recently, the Shelby County Commission passed an ordinance that would make it illegal for employers and firms that contract with the county to discriminate against people based on sexual orientation. Unfortunately, the debate largely ignored the key issue, which is whether it is just, moral, and appropriate to use force to correct others’ wayward beliefs.

Correcting Quiggin on Austrian Business-Cycle Theory

Australian economist John Quiggin

The Mises-Hayek theory of the business cycle — and of our recent housing bubble in particular — is gaining more and more adherents in the “real world.” To give anecdotal evidence: Five years ago, when I’d write a Mises Daily article, the fan mail would pour in from college students. But now, I get questions from hedge-fund managers and others working in the financial sector. Austrian economics is no longer a hobby; this is serious stuff.

Austrian Recipe vs. Keynesian Fantasy

The current crisis has revealed the Keynesian roots of mainstream economics. The only debate has been the type and size of bailouts and stimulus packages. The Keynesian fantasy is really a monomania because ultimately it is a fixation on a single panacea — more government spending. Meanwhile, the Austrians have the opposite set of policy guidelines and have heroically held to their recipe of liquidation.
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