Mises Wire

Lending standards for federal student loans have deteriorated, down to one criterion it seems: the ability to sign your name.

The committee to select the winners of the Nobel prize in economics almost always prefer interventionists to laissez-faire economists. The first year was no exception.

The pragmatist looks for areas where the economy and society fall short of the Garden of Eden, and these, of course, abound. Poverty, unemployment, old people with scurvy, young people with cavities — the list is indeed endless.

Sound money is the most important check on government spending.

Free speech does not imply people are free to insult you in your living room. Similarly, all property rights are "limited" in many ways by the property rights of neighbors and other owners.

Synthetic marijuana is more dangerous and unpredictable than the ordinary kind. It exists because the Drug War has made cheaper, more potent drugs more profitable. And on a black market, safety is not the seller's chief concern.

In his Newsweek column, Henry Hazlitt addresses inflation, deflation, and criticisms of capitalism by "democratic socialists." 

Democratic socialism in Britain in the late 1940s brought a wave of shortages with rations falling even below WWII standards.

Our greatest enemy today is the economic illiteracy and confusion on the part of those who insist on “planning,” “stabilizing,” and straitjacketing the economy.

Thanks to government loans, the price of college has skyrocketed in recent years because student loans mean colleges can raise their prices without driving away otherwise-price-sensitive students.