Somehow, someway, it always comes back to the central bank. With economic anxiety growing, trouble in Latin America , frustration at the length of the recession, suspicions that matters are going to get worse before they are better, and, above all, terror that stock prices could fall ever further, Alan Greenspan is letting it be known that rate
In the 19th century, notes Murray N. Rothbard, debates on monetary issues were highly public and intensely controversial. Do you favor the national bank? The gold standard? Bimetallism? What is your opinion of the free silver movement? What is most important: a highly liquid money stock that can prop up commodity prices, or a sound dollar that
Every new president in memory has plotted a grand “tax reform,” and the outlines of George W.’s are becoming ever more clear. The Washington Post reports that the administration—particular treasury secretary Paul O’Neill—is seriously considering a move away from the income tax toward a national consumption tax. The purpose is not to yield lower
Everyone is at work on a “stimulus plan” for doing something about the recession. But the much-publicized disagreement between the Republicans and Democrats is not about economic theory as such. There has been no critical thinking applied to the subject of why the recession, the longest in the postwar period, continues. Rather, the disagreement is
The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the peak of the last business cycle at March 2001, and has yet to call a trough, which is to say it hasn’t yet observed an end to the contraction or the beginnings of an economic recovery. The number of months we have traveled from the end of the last peak to the current day is 24. The NBER has used
The great economic error of mercantilism is the belief that foreign buyers are great but foreign sellers are not, and thus are barriers to imports necessary. For a nation at large, this error can be extremely costly because it dooms producers in the home country to inefficient lines of production and foists unnecessarily high prices on consumers.
[Originally published April 29, 2004.] What is and what is not free trade is a source of unending confusion, as the new World Trade Organization ruling on US cotton demonstrates. It’s a good thing to have the US cotton subsidy racket receive a thorough thrashing, even if at the hands of an unnecessary and objectionable body such as the WTO. If it
[First published April 20, 2005.] Politics, like war, robs words of their meaning. This is especially true of the language of economics. For example, economists know what investment means and that it’s good for the economy; but the government uses investment to mean its profligate spending projects which are, of course, harmful to the economy. In
H. Lee Scott, Jr., the CEO of Wal-Mart, surprised many by calling for an increase in the minimum wage. And what accolades were heaped on him! The company was even cast in a new role, from the exploiter of workers to the responsible advocate of pro-worker policies. And how selfless, for who has to pay such higher wages but companies like Wal-Mart?
So those scurvy bums at Wal-Mart are finally getting what is coming to them! The state of Maryland will force all companies with more then 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health insurance. Lots of companies have that many employees, but only one falls under the 8 percent threshold, which is you know who. It is only
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.