Mises Wire

A central premise of Keynesian economics is that, during a recession, government spending increases total output through a “multiplier”

Mises Daily Thursday by Jonathan Newman:

FedEx and UPS recently announced they will not deliver some goods that can be used to make guns. These companies should be free to do this, just as all owners should be free to decide with whom they will do business.

Nevertheless, when we parse the data, we find the single women actually earn more than single mean, which reminds us that women, as a group "earn less" because married women or women with children tend to have larger gaps in their work histories, and thus tend to be less up-to-date in their fields, or have fewer years of experience.

Police justify killings like that of Freddy Gray's on the grounds that such aggressive tactics are necessary to protect lives and property. But when widespread destruction of property, and threats to life and limb appear, the police are breathtakingly inefficient. 

I visited Baltimore once, about 10 years ago, for an academic conference.  While I remember its colonial-era architecture, the historic cathedral that once housed the great Cardinal Gibbons, and fun, chowder-laden conversations with local and visiting economists in brew pubs—the image 

Mises Daily Wednesday by Mark Thornton:

Measuring aggregate prices through a consumer price index is inherently arbitrary because someone decides what to measure and how. There are better ways to do it, but "fixing" the measure will do nothing to fix the ills of the Fed's monetary policy.

Mises Daily Tuesday by Patrick Barron:

A recent report commissioned by the prime minister of Iceland calls for limits on the money supply through ending fractional reserve banking and deposit insurance. Unfortunately, the report also calls for nearly unlimited control of the money supply by the central bank.

Most of the United States west of the 100th meridian is very dry.

One of the great ironies of American politics is that most politicians who talk about helping the middle class support policies that, by expanding the welfare-warfare state, are harmful to middle-class Americans. Eliminating the welfare-warfare state would benefit middle-class Americans by freeing them from exorbitant federal taxes, including the Federal Reserve’s inflation tax.

On April 15, Walter Block joined host Phil Pepin (at 28:00) to discuss anarchism and the international system of states. [Mp3 download.]

Mark Thornton also joined Pepin on April 1 (at 2:00) to discuss his article "Transparency or Deception: What the Fed Was Saying in 2007."  [Mp3 download.]