Regulation in the Free Market: It’s Not What Most People Believe
When the idea of a totally free market is floated in economic discussion, a widely accepted critique of such an idea is often related to the issue of how goods and services could be guaranteed safe for consumption. After all, without a government sending inspectors and decreeing standards of safety for products, it is often assumed companies, in their everlasting quest for profits without mercy, would have no incentive against selling whatever brings in the most cash.
Private Corporations Don’t Cause Price Inflation. Governments Do.
Interventionists always blame inflation on everything and anything except the only thing that makes aggregate prices rise: Issuing more units of currency than the real demand. Seller inflation is the same excuse and fallacy as cost-push inflation. A way to confuse citizens and assign causation to something that cannot make aggregate prices rise.
Striking Hollywood Actors and Writers Might Have to Get Used to Stagnant Wages
People with jobs, children, and actual responsibilities might not have noticed, but Hollywood is nearly shut down right now thanks to both a writers’ strike and an actors’ strike. Or more accurately: only the writers and actors who are members of unions are on strike. Members of SAG-AFTRA (SAG) and the Writers Guild of America (WGA) are refusing to work until TV and movie studios agree to a variety of demands.
Student’s Favorite Moments from Tuesday at Mises U
This year during Mises University, we want to share the perspective of students in the program. The following are YouTube shorts from some of this ye ar’s Mises Apprentices asking fellow students about the highlights from Tuesday, which included an evening pool party.
Mises University is going on the entire week. You can watch live from home at mises.org/live.
“Desertion” Is a Non-Crime Made Up by Governments
A federal judge this week vacated the desertion conviction of former US Army soldier Bowe Bergdahl, who was convicted in 2017 of desertion for leaving his post in Afghanistan. Bergdahl was then captured by Taliban forces, tortured, and imprisoned for four years before being freed by a prisoner exchange in 2014.
Inflation Is a Giant “Skim” on the American People
The price of a McDonald’s hamburger in the United States has inflated 3.75 percent annually over the last seventy years. McDonald’s has grown from a tiny hamburger stand in Des Plaines, Illinois, to the second largest fast-food chain on earth. Scale economies alone (never mind process and productivity improvements) should’ve allowed the price of a burger to decline materially over this period.
