Mises Wire

Bob Murphy and David Howden explore essays honoring Joe Salerno, revealing how a new generation of Austrian economists is shaping the future of economic thought.

Although President Trump has claimed that tariffs will ultimately raise our standard of living, they really are taxes on consumers. Furthermore, tariffs also deny consumers the choices they want to make.

Monetarists have long believed that the Fed should pursue policies of low inflation in order to counter the effects of lower prices through enhanced productivity. Thus, they reason, overall prices will remain stable. Such policies actually promote economic instability.

Mixed martial arts is a brutal, imperfect, occasionally ugly sport. But it’s also one of the most honest epistemic systems we have when dealing with self-defense, and each individual has the right to defend himself against aggressors.

Has anyone besides Murray Rothbard made a compelling case for state-free anarchy? In this week‘s Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon extols Libertarian Anarchy by Gerard Casey, which he says provides excellent arguments for doing away with the state.

Governments have so corrupted money that we forget that sound money, by providing both fungibility and privacy, has been a defense against overreaching governments. While sound money is in the interests of citizens, governments have managed to destroy it.

Modern historians depend heavily upon sweeping narratives and their take on the US War of Secession is no exception. Yet, the use of methodological individualism allows one to avoid sweeping judgments like claiming the Confederacy was founded upon belief in white supremacy.

When Cardinal Robert Prevost was named Pope, he took the name of Pope Leo XIV. Leo XIII authored Rerum Novarum, which is the basis for Catholic social teaching and is friendlier to private property and free markets than anything the Vatican has produced since then.

The British complained of unfair competition from goods supplied by the American colonists. So the state intervened to manage trade and make it “fair.” But the American revolutionaries saw protectionism for the scam it was, and still is.

When the American Revolution broke out, the American colonies were perhaps the least-taxed place on earth. How did this country move from that position to the colossus it has become today? Joshua Mawhorter provides some sobering July 4 reading to find the answer.