Tax burdens are so high that it might not be possible to pay off the high levels of indebtedness in most of the Western world. At least, that is the conclusion of a new IMF paper from Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff. Reinhart and Rogoff gained recent fame for their book “This Time Is Different”, in which they argued that high levels of public
It is easy to sympathize with 33-year-old Acsana Fernando . Since immigrating to Canada from Bangladesh as a refuge in 2002, she has struggled to find her footing. Bouncing from job to job trying to eke out a living, Ms. Fernando now works at a group home and earns the Ontario minimum wage of $10.25 an hour. After she pays taxes she is lucky to
The idea that some goods are “public” has been paraded around for at least 60 years as a justification for state involvement in certain affairs. The idea that some goods are non-excludable (you cannot stop someone from enjoying them), but also non-rivalrous (why would you exclude anyone because one person enjoying the good does not detract from
With all the brouhaha going around regarding income and wealth inequality , the question that is rarely asked is why inequality is something to abhor. As I wrote last November , whether inequality is a bad thing is not the right question – what matters more is your standard of living. Imagine that you earn $40,000 a year and your boss doubles you
Christine Lagarde admits that the International Monetary Fund “got it wrong” when it chastised the British government’s austerity plans. One year ago the IMF’s chief economist Oliver Blanchard claimed the U.K. was “playing with fire” by cutting its budget. With the benefit of hindsight, the IMF has changed its stance. The U.K. economy is set to
The public sector in France is among the best financed in Europe. Taxes claim around 45% of all income earned in the country, but even that is not enough to finance all the government projects. The country also runs a public budget deficit of over 3% of GDP, putting the whole output of the French government around 50% of the whole economy. With
The British Columbia’s teachers union just voted 86% in favour of an all out strike. If a settlement is not reached with the provincial government before the end of this week, nearly 40,000 teachers could be walking the picket line come Monday. At stake are the common issues of class size, salary, and benefits. Strikes by public teachers are
Striking taxi drivers snarled traffic in several European cities yesterday in a show of solidarity against a common threat. Unlike other protests of the past few years which have largely been against austerity measures, this time workers from London, Paris, Berlin and Madrid were unified against Uber . A smartphone app that connects drivers and
[ LewRockwell.com ] by Lew Rockwell Anyone wanting to learn more about anarcho-capitalism could do no better than to begin with two books by Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty and The Ethics of Liberty . The first of these diagnoses what is wrong with the regime of state domination: the second describes in substantial detail how the anarchist
Stephen Poloz, Governor of the Bank of Canada, thinks Canada may have a housing problem on its hands: On the home front high house prices and record household debt remain the most important “vulnerabilities” in the Canadian financial system – a problem highlighted in reports this week by both the International Monetary Fund and the Organization
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.