The German "stimulus" package does nothing to actually stimulate true economic growth. If German policymakers were smart, they'd be cutting taxes and spending, while abolishing regulations.
Audio Mises Wire
Audio recordings of Mises Wire articles, offering contemporary news and opinion through the lens of Austrian economics and libertarian political economy.
In this short essay recently found in the Mises Institute Archives, Mises goes over the basics of monetary theory and shows why the concept of velocity of circulation is useless for understanding changes in the purchasing power of the monetary unit.
The forces of anticapitalism have long latched on to whatever best suits them for pushing their agenda. Whatever the latest injustice may be—from a polluted environment to poverty to racism—the solution is always the end of capitalism.
As Japan has shown, ultralow interest rates can greatly affect a society that was once impressively focused on innovation and investment.
The Republic of Genoa provides an example of how a small "state" managed to defend itself against much larger states using military resources that were overwhelmingly owned and controlled by private parties.
Liberalism was the most popular and influential ideology during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. So, every new socialist and authoritarian movement defined itself as "liberal" to capitalize on liberalism's popularity and importance.
Old coins vaccinated me against trusting politicians long before I grew my first scruffy beard. I began collecting coins when I was eight years old in 1965, the year President Lyndon Johnson began removing all the silver from American coins.
There are some reasons to be optimistic about the future of free market money. On the other hand, the world's governments will fight true currency competition every step of the way.
It doesn't take an immense amount of insight to see the relevance of Tocqueville's central concern to our situation today. What are the so-called Twitter mobs if not the "tyranny of the majority" at work?
Woodrow Wilson was an especially devoted white supremacist, even by the standard of his day. The Left is finally targeting Wilson for this, but Wilson's legacy is far worse than even the Left will admit.
It's a good thing when politicians recognize that there are people out there who are less fortunate than the political class. But this empathy only does anyone any good if policymakers refrain from socialistic government schemes that make poverty worse.
The government's plan for "contact tracing" to prevent the spread of COVID-19 relies on huge amounts of government spending, plus unproven science as to the nature of the disease.
In America, the person who declared a state of emergency (and can renew the emergency endlessly) is the same person who then uses the emergency to rule by decree. F.A. Hayek once pointed out how absurd such a system is.
The saddest aspect of this economic ignorance is that these evangelicals have completely ignored the real reductions in poverty rates in the past forty years, reductions that are due to liberalizing economies that once were in socialist straitjackets.
It will be very interesting if the police—who did nothing to disperse protests that were obviously in violation of bans on mass gatherings—turn around and arrest business owners and other "violators" of a second round of stay-at-home orders.
The Democrats want trillions spent on infrastructure for a "Green New Deal." The GOP wants a trillion for roads and bridges. They're likely to find a way to "work together" to spend trillions either way.
A second round of lockdowns will assault an America already suffering from widespread unemployment and a fragile economy. Even worse, round two is likely to last longer than round one, bringing an even larger economic and social toll.
After the Great War, Austrian cities and towns began issuing their own money. The Germans tried something similar, but without the voluntary and decentralized aspects of the Austrian model. German disaster ensued.
It is possible to conceive of a world where fractional reserve banking is understood by both banker and depositor and involves no deception or fraud. But in that world, deposits cease to be money and become complex credit securities.
Providing the opening for Mises’s great methodological work gave Rothbard the opportunity to set down his perspective on the importance of the praxeological method.
