• Leave No Parent Behind (J. Surowiecki, New Yorker): “In the past two decades or so, the cost of having children has risen much faster than the cost of being childless. Conventional wisdom aside, this has little to do with spoiled kids, acquisitive parents, or PlayStation 2.

• Confidence in Iraq War Falls Below 50% (Scripps Howard): “The poll, taken over two weeks ending Aug. 12, found a broad drop in commitment for U.S. involvement in Iraq over a similar survey taken in early May, shortly after President Bush declared an end to major military operations there. At that time, fewer than a third of Americans said they had doubts about the correctness of the war and the military occupation that followed.

Neoconservatives, writes Irving Kristol, “are impatient with the Hayekian notion that we are on ‘the road to serfdom.’ Neocons do not feel that kind of alarm or anxiety about the growth of the state in the past century, seeing it as natural, indeed inevitable.

The  WSJ (8-15-03) offers this spin on Schwarzenegger’s Austrianism:

Arnie’s Money Man
By DONALD LUSKIN

Hasta la Von Mises, baby! Gone are the hopes that Arnold Schwarzenegger would bring his own brand of free-market Austrian economics to California’s troubled economy. The would-be tax terminator has chosen as his chief economics adviser a tax perpetuator — Warren Buffett.

“Recently, a new business I planned to open in Santa Fe became one the latest victims of the ‘living wage’ campaign that is crippling firms and hurting local economies across the US,” writes Ed Tinsley.

James Ostrowski, a Buffalo, N.Y., attorney and columnist for LewRockwell.com, told CNSNews.com that acting on a warped interpretation of the Commerce Clause, Congress has far exceeded the powers originally granted to it by the Constitution. The Commerce Clause, he said, was originally designed to prevent state governments from enacting prohibitive trade tariffs.

• Iraqi Fuel Distribution New Priority (UPI): “It is an ironic mess of epic proportions. Iraq is a country practically floating on oil, yet lines for diesel fuel stretch for hours and sometimes days throughout the country. Benzene, what Iraqis call the gas they put in cars, is in a better state, but kerosene and cooking oil are severely stretched. A Babylontour guide with a degree in German literature collects wood every day to cook dinner for her family.

The PBS Special “Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy” is now available as a broadband webcast.  Based on the pro-market book by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, it is structured around the debate between Keynes and Hayek, including footage of interviews with Hayek.

According to OMB Watch, that postal mailing telling you that the government was sending you a check cost $20 million--only a few seconds of federal spending but even so, its only purpose was to announce the wonderful things that the president and Congress are doing for you.

What does it mean to say that there has been “education inflation”?  It is an analogy to money inflation.  Austrians understand money inflation in this way: money substitutes are created that do not represent actual goods and services, (e.g.