It certainly isn’t common to find much agreement between the various authors here at the Mises Institute and our favorite metaphorical punching bag: Paul Krugman. But when it comes to the recently resurrected policy corpse of rent control, we have found a common cause. As Krugman noted back in 2000 , The analysis of rent control is among the
Newly elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may not be the expert on the Israeli and Palestinian conflict or what the three branches of the American government are , but she certainly thinks herself an expert on tax and energy policy. Her energy policy involves reducing carbon emissions to zero within 12 years. What will pay for the
It’s been a very odd thing to watch as liberals, neocons and even outright communists have repeatedly said something akin to “freedom of speech doesn’t give you a platform” while one conservative and libertarian after another is kicked off various social media sites. The same people who demanded that ma’ and pa’ Christian bakers who gross a few
The Left has become increasingly and often bizarrely obsessed with all manners of supposed privilege these days. Buzzfeed even put out a quiz on how much privilege you have. All of these various privileges work to form a simple Marxist-like dichotomy between the oppressed and the oppressor. So for whites, men, heterosexuals, Christians,
But can the debate really be as one-sided as I portray it? Well, look at the results: again and again, people on the opposite side prove to have used bad logic, bad data, the wrong historical analogies, or all of the above. I’m Krugtron the Invincible ! Thus wrote the great Paul Krugman . A man so modest as to proclaim that “I think I can say
Over the course of approximately six hours, the Left in the United States made a spectacular, 180 degree turn on federalism and states’ rights without even recognizing it. Although this lack of self-awareness shouldn’t be particularly surprising coming from the modern Left, which seems to have missed the irony when it goes about shutting down
The standard narrative floating about the mainstream press is that the developing world is held back by a quagmire of free market fundamentalism. Sure, there are a few exceptions to this narrative, such as Peter Bauer and William Easterly . But pretty much all we hear is a chorus from the likes of Jeffrey Sachs ; that in order for these poor
In what has become a running joke amongst those skeptical of the claim that minimum wage increases have no effect on unemployment, a recent report by the Employment Policies Institute showed that 174 of the 184 co-sponsors of a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour hired unpaid interns. My personal favorite example of this type of
When Christopher Nolan was promoting his previous film Interstellar , he made the casual observation that “Take a field like economics for example. [Unlike physics] you have real material things and it can’t predict anything. It’s always wrong.” There is a lot more truth in that statement than most academic economists would like to admit. Alan Jay
Last month, former Vermont governor Howard Dean announced that “hate speech is not protected by the first amendment.” Specifically, Dean was opposing a proposed speaking engagement for columnist Ann Coulter, whose ideas are apparently so offensive to Dean, that even the most fundamental freedoms cannot be allowed to endure. Dean no doubt thought
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.