Mises Wire

Proposals to ban single-use plastics is yet another triumph of symbolism over substance. Unfortunately, while the benefits are largely illusory, the costs are quite real.

As Murray Rothbard so rightly put it, minimum wage laws translate into “compulsory unemployment.” They don't provide any jobs. They only outlaw them.

Recycling isn't free. It requires the use of time and resources, many of which end up wasted. But politicians keep insisting that recycling is always a win-win, even though we have many examples to the contrary.

When it comes to Baltimore being a haven of appalling violent crime, Trump's not wrong. Although it has strict gun control laws, Baltimore's homicide rate is comparable to that of El Salvador and Venezuela.

Qualified immunity is the clearest example that the rule of law is dead (or, perhaps, never existed); government officials live by one set of rules, and the rest of us live by another.

With its latest rate cut, the Fed is either caving to pressure from the Trump administration, or the Fed is admitting the economy is weaker than stated. Or the Fed simply doesn't know what's going on.

There is no reason to believe the next 30 years will be any different. Banks will create booms, the little banks will be allowed to fail, while the large banks are bailed out.

The United States is not a nation. From the very beginning it was more of a collection of various nations united by ideas of political unity and by fairly high levels of tolerance for other groups within that union. The US certainly contains nations, but it was never a single nation.

With the economy growing at 2.1%, unemployment at 3.6%, creating 170,000 jobs per month, and estimated underlying core inflation of 2%, no objective data justifies cutting rates that are already artificially low.

Justin Raimondo said things that were painful to hear. He said things that needed saying. He encouraged me. He encouraged friends of mine. He encouraged colleagues of mine.