Mises Wire

Without the discipline of profit-and-loss, the desires and goals of the bureaucrats, limited only by the prescriptions and budget of the legislature, necessarily guide policy.

Why do we study history? Some study it as a way to confirm their own political ideologies, something that often happens when historians look at the US Civil War and its Reconstruction aftermath. According to Ludwig von Mises, one cannot bring an ideological lens and honestly approach history.

How did the US go from a nation that revered liberty to one with despotic governance? While political forces already were trying to push the US in a direction of centralization, the Civil War completed the job. We see the results of those centralized outcomes daily.

Jonathan Newman appears on the show to discuss Bob's recent debate on ZeroHedge, which centered on Austrian economics versus Modern Monetary Theory (MMT).

Unrestricted birthright citizenship is increasingly rare, and with only a few exceptions, it persists only in countries with negative or near-zero rates of in-migration.

Most Americans think of Abraham Lincoln in hagiographic terms, the man who “saved” the United States from destruction. A closer look gives us a different picture of “Honest Abe.” David Gordon reviews a book that very much questions the Lincoln mythology.

Has the statist tide turned from where we were culturally and politically four years ago? Or is this just a temporary lull before the political culture takes another hard left turn?

The challenge facing economic science is to counter the reactionary counterrevolution by states and governments that smother voluntary cooperation and free human interaction based on liberty. The chains must be thrown off in favor of the libertarian ideal of an anarchocapitalist system. 

John Maynard Keynes is often credited with presciently criticizing the harsh anti-German measures of the Treaty of Versailles. But, it turns out that Keynes was playing both sides.  

Economist Jonathan Newman joins Ryan to discuss how deficit spending and runaway debt is causing price inflation and higher interest rates.