The embargo continues, partly because the Cuba situation has indirectly exposed the corrupt sham of the entire Cold War and the corrupt machinery of the US national security establishment.
Audio Mises Wire
Audio recordings of Mises Wire articles, offering contemporary news and opinion through the lens of Austrian economics and libertarian political economy.
The fact Boris Johnson and Joe Biden are both using the phrase "build back better" is bad news. It's a phrase pioneered by groups twisting the covid-19 pandemic into a pretext for extreme “green” policies.
In Brazil, the most effective reforms seem to be accumulating at the state and local levels. There has been real success in pushing back against tax increases and more.
Trying to stay ahead of the government printing press is the modern citizen’s constant worry.
At best, police data shows four in ten murders in America are never resolved and no suspect is convicted. Lesser crimes have even fewer resolutions. And if we look more closely, things look even worse.
Covid has exposed how easy it is for government to weaponize healthcare. How long will the doctor-patient relationship remain sacred?
Given the overt hostility that progressives have toward private enterprise in the first place, politicians will take shutdown-caused shortages and empty shelves as “proof” that private enterprise has failed.
We have had nearly eight months of life and liberty stolen from us by politicians and their hysteria-promoting accomplices in media. How much more will we accept?
The NRA would be wise to vote with its feet. Millions of Americans have already escaped the high taxes and freedom-destroying blue state regimes by doing the same.
Vague and generalizing theories about culture and race don't tell us much about the wealth gap between blacks and whites. The answer is more complex.
Governments that redistribute wealth and regulate our daily lives are inherently corrupt. We cheapen the word "corruption" when we reserve it for just a few politicians who break the arbitrary rules.
Rather than choose among a group of narcissists desperate to become popular by redistributing the income of others, why not choose officeholders by lot for a single term?
Homicides were flat through 2019. Then spring 2020 arrived, and with it a wave of homicides in many American cities. Could the social and economic effects of lockdowns be the cause?
Any act of the state is now thought to be justified if "the people voted for it." And, as government increases its plundering activities, more and more citizens want in on the popular say-so.
Police reforms are making it easier to monitor police activities, and even to hold officers personally liable when found guilty of abusing their power. But some officers don't like that at all.
Thomas Sowell has explained that while "Marx may have explicitly advocated the idea of a democratic workers’ government, his own personal style was dictatorial, manipulative, and intolerant."
It's increasingly clear two things are going on: leftists are very interested in taking their rioting and looting far beyond city limits, and government police are not interested in doing much about it.
Although many Americans often conflate the two ideologies, conservatism and (classical) liberalism are historically quite distinct. Indeed, conservatism has long been explicitly hostile to both capitalism and classical liberalism.
The best social policy is one that supports job creation and rising wages. Entitlements do not make a society more prosperous, and ultimately drive it to stagnation.
If the hallmark of conventional economics is unrealistic models, the hallmark of Austrian economics is a profound appreciation of the price system. Prices provide us with critical information about the relative scarcity of goods and services.
