American journalists and academics have invented a fairy tale in which "free market orthodoxy" has dominated political thinking in America for the past forty years. This is not even slightly true, but pundits repeat the lie again and again.
Audio Mises Wire
Audio recordings of Mises Wire articles, offering contemporary news and opinion through the lens of Austrian economics and libertarian political economy.
Democracy is only acceptable when the outcome is what the ruling class wants. Fortunately, the federal courts are always handy to overturn the results of free elections.
Key methodological differences between Austrians were highlighted in Milton Friedman's "The Methodology of Positive Economics." A key piece of conflict: Friedman's focus on prediction rather than explanation.
Senator Hawley wants government regulation of social media, and he insists that social media companies are somehow controlling and manipulating people. But Hawley is mistaken. You have free will even when using Facebook.
Advocates for vaccine passports are a bit like abusive husbands. They say they want to be nice to you. But you keep screwing up and refusing to take your vaccines. So now you're forcing them to keep you locked down forever.
Biden’s tax increase plan does not make sense from a growth, revenue, or deficit perspective, and it does virtually nothing to address the real problem: ballooning spending on programs like Social Security.
With Jerome Powell and Janet Yellen focusing on using monetary policy to manage climate change, the M1 money supply has gone parabolic, from just over $4 trillion in February to $18.6 trillion in March. This is right out of Zimbabwe's playbook.
Local nullification offers a practical guide to resisting tyranny in a way that reflects the real wishes of local community members against the ivory-tower mentality of their government “representatives.”
Instead of trying to spin conservative justifications for disastrous monetary policy, conservatives should join libertarians and classical liberals in working to limit government power while restoring sound money and greater market freedom.
If today they come for the smoker, tomorrow they will come for you. Neo-Prohibitionism has been long on the march.
For the entrepreneur in a market economy, nothing is a sure thing. Every business is only a short step from bankruptcy. No business possesses the power to make people buy what they do not want. All success is potentially fleeting.
The US has millions of idle workers. In a normal economy this would put a damper on demand. But in our money-printing economy, consumer demand is surging even as production falls behind. An employment bubble is the result.
Do huge wealth redistribution schemes like Biden's new plan actually make people better off? Some people will get a net benefit. How numerous are they? How many millions will take a net loss? The government has no idea.
Now that the average American voter is barely paying attention—and that the US is facing an economic crisis and weak recovery—it has become politically expedient to move further toward wrapping up a couple more lost wars.
The ideas of critical race theory and critical white studies shield a ruling elite from vengeance by attempting to make the mass of white people the scapegoat for their own crimes.
Representative democracy cannot subsist if a great part of the voters are on the government payroll. If elected officials no longer consider themselves servants of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, doles, and subsidies, democracy is done for.
People must still compete for resources in a socialist economy. In fact, the competition is intense. On the other hand, thanks to markets, basic necessities—and even basic luxuries—are now more more accessible than ever.
Now that Cuban president Raul Castro has resigned the presidency of Cuba, will the US government lift its six-decade economic embargo against Cuba? Don't bet on it.
The central bank has basically destroyed the business of risk, and commercial real estate remains a looming disaster. As a result, banks aren't lending to regular people. The economy increasingly relies on little more than newly printed money.
It seems that governments want to convince us that they have saved the world when the reality is that the misguided lockdowns were the cause of the economic debacle and lifting them is the main cause of the recovery.
