Mises Wire

In Nicholas Wolterstorff‘s Understanding Liberal Democracy, he assails a vastly influential school of thought in a way that libertarians will find useful.

The goalposts are continually changing (more like fallacy-hopping), but one would-be goal of tariffs needs to be confronted—tariffs for domestic job protection.

The last excuse that diehard defenders of President Trump’s tariff policies have advanced now lies in ruins. 

Donald Trump says he plans for a big 12% jump in military spending, he has threatened war with Iran, and has escalated the war with the Houthis. None of this has anything to do with defending the United States. 

We are bombarded with claims that capitalism causes inequality, yet what does it really mean? In truth, in a free market economy, differences in income, even large differences, don‘t mean much since most people have a high standard of living.

Economist Robert Higgs described the “ratchet effect” in which government either creates a crisis or responds to one, leading to a permanent expansion of government power. After the crisis ends, government retreats—but not to the point where is was pre-crisis.

College football has finally experienced an athlete‘s holdout in order to leverage a hoped-for payday. In the case of Nico Iamaleava, he tried to leverage more money from the University of Tennessee but failed spectacularly. There are economic lessons to be learned here.

It‘s looking more and more like this playbook is following the exact same story that we’ve witnessed during every other Republican administration over the past forty years.

By trying to deport foreign student Rumeysa Ozturk for simply writing an op-ed in a student paper critical of Israel, the Trump administration and its supporters quickly forget that their actions are part of a slippery slope that imperils free speech in this country. It doesn‘t end here.

The central bank monetary shenanigans in both Europe and the US no longer can be ignored or covered up. Unfortunately, as their economies falter, the Fed and the European Central Bank will resort to even more financial trickery to cover for previous monetary foolishness.