What You Should Know About Inflation

No subject is so much discussed today — or so little understood — as inflation. The politicians in Washington talk of it as if it were some horrible visitation from without, over which they had no control — like a flood, a foreign invasion, or a plague. It is something they are always promising to “fight” — if Congress or the people will only give them the “weapons” or “a strong law” to do the job. Yet the plain truth is that our political leaders have brought on inflation by their own money and fiscal policies. They are promising to fight with their right hand the conditions brought on with their left.

Sovereign Wealth Messiahs

While Sovereign Wealth Funds have existed for several decades, it has only been in the last few years that their investment schemes have been investigated and scrutinized. While their portfolios and long-term goals vary, one common trait every state-controlled investment fund shares is that the initial seed money came from the pockets of coerced taxpayers or nationalized resources. Armed with billions of dollars in dishonest money, these institutions are lauded as messiahs, brokering 11th-hour bailouts and refinancing troubled megacompanies.

Reputation

A mini-controversy in Alabama is repeated, in my forms, around the country. In its current form, it goes like this. A public official from Party A, a member of the state school board, attacks another public official from Party B, a woman who happens to serve in the state legislature while serving as a high official in the state’s two-year college system.

How extensive was Buckley’s influence?

Posner has some interesting thoughts. What I can’t stand is the incredible, shocking ignorance of those who claim that free market thought in American began with WFB. The Mises Institute has made available vast quantities of books and publications--Nock, Garrett, Flynn, Hazlitt, Mencken, and on and on--that were far better than the stuff you get from National Review today. Posner doesn’t seem to know anything about this.

The Coming Second Life Industrial Revolution?

In the field of macroeconomic theory, the Austrian view is distinct from other schools of economic thought due to its emphasis on the role of capital. In attempting to extend the application of Austrian economics to virtual economies, it will be a worthwhile exercise to explore the nature of capital that exists within Second Life and observe how it is evolving. In the real world, one example of a capital good might be a bulldozer, which is not itself consumed, but is used to improve land by making it more suitable for human use. Analogously in Second Life, someone could use a scripted object to automate the shaping of virtual terrain. The object would only be capital, however, if reshaping the land were not an end in itself.

Free Trade versus Free-trade Agreements

The Mises Institute has consistently favored free trade--the real thing--while criticizing “free-trade agreements” as mercantilism in disguise. The position is a lonely one, except that looking back history we find that the Austrians were against trade agreements from the beginning, even battling as forms of Keynesian planning. So there is a tradition here that would lead modern Austrians to oppose efforts like the North American Free Trade Agreement and all the others that have followed.

Climate Change and the Choice of Life

It is one thing to be concerned about the possible impact of the sum of many tiny human actions on the climate of the planet on which we find ourselves, for this is entirely consistent with choosing life. It is quite another thing to presume that we are doomed unless, whatever we are doing, we stop doing it right now. As Mises wrote: “Some philosophies … look upon life as an absolute evil full of pain, suffering, and anguish, and apodictically deny that any purposeful human effort can render it tolerable.”

Should you take Michelle Obama’s Career Advice?

There’s not a lot of money in Zanesville. Nearly a quarter of the Ohio town’s population, 22.4 percent, is living below the poverty line, including 32.3 percent of those under 18 years of age. That’s nearly double the national poverty rate, officially reported by the Census Bureau last August as 12.3 percent overall, nationwide, and 17.4 percent for those under 18. Still, Michelle Obama stopped by the other day during a campaign visit and warned the locals to not go for the big money.
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