The Free Market 14, no. 1 (January 1996) The sad spectacle of political stalemate in the United States suggests that Americans are stuck with our current size and scope of government—and the lackluster economy that the government’s strictures cause. Is the welfare state a tangled web from which no nation can escape? Evidently not. Chileans and
The Free Market 14, no. 1 (January 1996) Stuff those corks back in the champagne bottles. The Republican leadership in Congress can’t celebrate the New Year until it breaks silence on the Mexican bailout. This is a debacle that makes subsidies for midnight basketball seem sensible. With the Mexican precedent, who knows what 1996 will bring? Is
The Free Market 14, no. 1 (January 1996) The Gold Standard Act of 1890, which officially established the gold standard in America, was the culmination of a twenty-year battle between inflationists, who favored unlimited government purchase of silver (the “Free Silver” movement), and the advocates of sound money based on the gold standard. The
The Free Market 14, no. 1 (January 1996) Once again, a national gay rights bill is before Congress, with the difference that, this time, it has President Clinton’s endorsement. For the first time, an American President has put the power and prestige of his office behind a gay version of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to outlaw discrimination against
The Free Market 14, no. 1 (January 1996) There is no oil in Nashville or sheep in St. Louis, and only the female Baltimore oriole is brown. But that hasn’t stopped the Rams from moving to Missouri, the Cleveland Browns from moving to Baltimore, or the Houston Oilers from moving to Nashville. Pigskin lovers and haters abound, but the ranks of
The Free Market 14, no. 2 (February 1996) There aren’t many such businesses left, but you can still find traces. Walk (or, more prudently, drive) along 125th St. in Harlem, and you will see Philip Blick’s Hardware, Ida’s Costumers, Lazarus Clothes, Dr. Goldin’s Dental Offices, Benjamin Furs, and Dr. Irving Benjamin, Optometrist. Langsam and
The Free Market 14, no. 2 (February 1996) People made fun of Gerald Ford’s buttons that said “WIN,” meaning “Whip Inflation Now.” The buttons and the accompanying propaganda campaign implied that consumers’ bad vibes were the cause of inflation. Ha, Ha. Now, the White House, members of both parties, and their court economists have done Gerry one
The Free Market 14, no. 2 (February 1996) Middle-class incomes, the core of what we call the “standard of living,” have been falling for more than two decades. Though people have known this intuitively, only recently have we heard much about it. Economists and the media have been conditioned to look for the ups and downs in the business cycle,
The Free Market 14, no. 2 (February 1996) The pattern is all-too-familiar: Congress and its bureaus of executive-branch henchmen arrogantly mock the Constitution, only to be applauded by the courts. Nowhere is this pattern more evident than the recent case of Leslie Salt Co. vs. the United States . Here are the facts. For decades, a 153-acre
The Free Market 14, no. 2 (February 1996) Want to hear what a scoff sounds like? The next time you’re talking to a political scientist, an economist, or a public employee, mention the possibility of a private road. Roads aren’t supposed to be private, right? They are supposed to be “public goods,” meaning that capitalists can’t or won’t build
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.