Taking Government Money Austrian influenced economist Mark Skousen recently turned 65 and faced a dilemma many us have or will soon take – should we take social security ‘benefits’? The issue is part of a broader issue for libertarians, can use of government services, including money payments be morally justified? Walter Block , not only a top
Peter Lewin posted some very interesting commentary of Richard Epstein ’s distinguished scholar lecture at on-going Southern Economics Association (SEA) meeting. I had the opportunity to hear Epstein several years ago at the Association of Private Enterprise Education meeting and hardily agree with Peter’s assessment that “To hear Epstein talk is
Danny Sanchez, in a Circle Bastiat post ,”Yes, Rothbard Covered That: Wealth Tax Edition , used Rothbard to criticize yet another proposal to fight the imaginary evil of the left, income or wealth inequality (See Daniel Altman New York Times column , “To Reduce Inequality, Tax Wealth, Not Income). Rothbard’s conclusion re a wealth tax: “It is
The hunt for deductions, exemptions, and loopholes to eliminate, undertaken by The Economist (as seen in my last post ) and other “free-market” advocates, is part of the never-ending quest to “broaden the tax base”, which has been a fixture of Republican economic policy for decades. Mitt Romney referred to it repeatedly in his presidential
Kurt Schuler at Free Banking provides a tribute to von Mises and an assessment of The Theory of Money and Credit on the centenary of its publication (1912 to 2012). Schuler admits that his assessment is not based on a re-reading of the book, but on a re-skimming and reference to notes from a more through reading at an earlier date. His overall
Yesterday Barron and Bloom in “A Golden Path” ( http://mises.org/daily/6281/A-Golden-Path ) responded to my Mises Daily article “Fool’s Gold Standards” . Their expansion was very useful. I don’t think we are as far apart as they seem to think. They just have more confidence that the dots will fall in place more spontaneously than I do. Joe
If you enjoyed the video in Hark, I Hear a Christmas Fallacy , you should enjoy this poem by Patrick Barrington, “I Want to be a Consumer,” originally published in Punch two years prior to the publication of Keynes’s General Theory (issue April 25, 1934) and reprinted in Hazlitt’s The Failure of the “New Economics”, pp. 133-134. I Want to be a
In ABCT and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), Peter Klein makes readers aware of new evidence, contra Krugman, that Federal housing policy, and especially the CRA, significantly contributed to the financial crisis. Peter concludes, “ Raghu Rajan [author of the new NBER paper Klein is highlighting] puts it in a very Austrian-sounding way” and
The Indian Journal of Economics and Business recently published a revised version of my testimony to Congress in Vol 11, no. 3, December 2012 with the title “ Fractional Reserve Banking and Central Banking As Sources of Economic Instability: The Sound Money Alternative .” An early version appeared as a Mises Daily . Thanks to the Mises Institute
Over at EconLog Bryan Caplan makes some very interesting and important observations on “How I Was Wrong About Government Debt.” Most economists when gauging the impact of the massive government debt on the economy compare Debt to GDP, but per Caplan: The right comparison is government debt relative to annual tax revenue . By this correct measure,
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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.