For decades the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget have consistently understated the benefits of tax cuts with “static analysis” that ignores how such policy changes provide added incentives to work, save, and invest. The result has been bigger and more powerful government at the expense of a smaller private
During the press conference on May 19, 1998, announcing the broad range anti-trust action of the Department of Justice against Microsoft, there was just one piece of evidence cited against the company that pointed to some effort to subvert consumer choice. In an internal memo Microsoft employed the phrase “make the customer” use one of the
In the 19th century, the legal profession was open. There were no mandates on the kind or duration of education a person had to have. No law restricted anyone from offering his services. The only complaints were from lawyers who wanted to force “higher standards” upon the market. Today, the law profession is closed off to all but those who can
“We have progressively abandoned the freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.” (F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom ). Economic thinking today is divided into many schools of thought, such as the following : the Keynesians, the Post- Keynesians, the Rational Expectations School, the
The new issue of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics (Summer 1998), the flagship scholarly journal of the Mises Institute, features a never-before-published article by Ludwig von Mises entitled “Monopoly Prices.” The manuscript, kept in the Grove City College Archives, is marked “Revised, July 1944.” It is his most in-depth treatment of
The Free Market 16, no. 1 (January 1998) Competition is a process, the Austrian economists have long said, not a moment frozen in time. Today’s dominant company could be tomorrow’s rubble. Whether the winner can stay on top is dependent on its management, its ability to innovate, and, above all, the will of the consuming public. But since the
The Free Market 16, no. 2 (February 1998) Scrooge came in the form of government last year. The company Bill Gates built into the planet’s leading money machine is still the target of a federal probe and a senate inquiry. The charge: anti-competitive behavior. Microsoft’s stunning financial success comes from two sources: a “natural monopoly” in
The Free Market 16, no. 8 (August 1998) Former FTC Chairman James C. Miller III, tells the story of how, in the early 1980s, Chrysler head Lee Iacocca requested that the FTC block a proposed joint venture between General Motors and Toyota. The request was denied. GM and Toyota formed the New United Motor Manufacturing Corporation. Iacocca
The Free Market 16, no. 8 (August 1998) Janet Reno couldn’t get the hang of computers. By her own account, she couldn’t tell “what was on the hard drive, what was on the soft drive.” So she prefers “paper and pencil.” Then she arrogantly sets herself up as Americas computer czar, claiming to know better than tens of millions of consumers about
The Free Market 16, no. ( 1998) The Microsoft Corporation’s continuing difficulties with the Department of Justice, even after an appeals court ruled in the company’s favor, reveal the absurdity of attempting to apply 19th-century antitrust law to a 21st-century computer and telecommunications marketplace. Microsoft had licensed its Windows
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.