Japan’s economy is a lifeless corpse. In the 1990s, Tokyo propped up zombie banks: institutions that are solvent in name only. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, Japan ensured these companies remained open. Today, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is presiding over a zombie economy, and he thinks he has a solution to inject new life into the rotting
In 1962, businessman Sam Walton had an entrepreneurial objective in mind: Offer shoppers the lowest prices possible. From forcing US suppliers to slash costs to finding cheap imports abroad, Walmart became an iconic global brand, generating $500 billion in annual revenues because of its ability to enhance the consumer’s purchasing power, enabling
On May 11, 1998, at a formal ceremony, Economy Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn activated the mint printing press and produced its first euro coin, making France the first of 11 nations participating in the launch of the single currency to strike the money. Taking a bite out of the coin, Strauss-Kahan declared that it’s “the real thing, it’s no
The eurozone could not borrow from the momentum of the U.S. economy in the third quarter as economic growth slumped to a tepid 0.2% , the slowest rate in more than four years. With the 19-nation currency bloc beginning to stagnate, and the heavyweights failing to post significant gains, Brussels is in panic mode, likely leaning on the European
A man walks into a shop and asks, “You don’t have any meat?” “No,” replies the sales clerk, “We don’t have any fish. It’s the store across the street that doesn’t have any meat.” Scenes of food shortages, long lines, and fed up Russians were commonplace in the Soviet Union. Moscow believed it could deliver a world of prosperity and egalitarianism
One of the hottest sectors in the U.S. today is energy. The shale revolution brought to you by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has produced a historic boom period in the oil and gas industry. Thousands of jobs are being created every month, regulations are coming down, the U.S. is not beholden to the Paris Accord any longer, and domestic output
The US manufacturing sector has had a rich history, one that has lifted millions of Americans into the middle-class, making the Land of the Free the most envied nation in the world. You clock in your eight to 10 hours a day, bring your lunch pail, and complete an honest day’s work, giving you a paycheck to purchase that new radio set to listen to
It’s dead. No, not the Internet. Net neutrality. After months of legal challenges, public backlash, and Democrats trying to overturn it, the repeal of net neutrality has finally been completed. You can now count to three and wait for the likes of John Oliver and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to hysterically declare – yet again – that the internet
There is growing concern across the globe that automation will lead us to a dystopian future. With robots becoming ubiquitous in every aspect of our lives, the marketplace will be filled with cheap goods, but the consuming population can’t acquire them because they don’t have a job. It is a legitimate worry for millions of people, especially when
In the 1959 Broadway play, A Raisin in the Sun , an impoverished black family uses a substantial insurance payment to purchase a home in an affluent and white neighborhood. Perturbed by the fact that black people would move into their community, a white representative from the area offers to buy the home to prevent them from planting roots. In the
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.