Mises Wire

Like presidents before him, Donald Trump is using the IRS as a weapon against organizations he doesn‘t like. Richard Nixon did the same thing—and it helped bring down his presidency.

In the name of fighting income inequality, pundits in the UK and US are calling for wealth taxes as magic bullets that will restore an imaginary state of income equality that never existed in the first place. It is time to abandon this idea for good.

In the world of private enterprise, business owners pay attention to costs already incurred that cannot be recovered, also known as “sunk costs.” Government officials, however, see sunk costs as an incentive to promote public projects where costs clearly outweigh benefits.

Real ID is the latest example of the government using 9/11 as an excuse to grab more power.

Not only are Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) cultists dishonest about the role of money, they also are dishonest about money‘s history. By taking issue with Carl Menger‘s historical version, they expose their own ignorance of how money came about.

Mainstream economists define inflation as the increase in an imaginary “price level” that is relatively neutral in its effects. Austrian economists, however, know better, as they realize that the effects of inflating the money supply are anything but neutral.

Once a recession sets in, markets can only repair themselves if prices — including wages — are allowed to fall where necessary. The resulting increases in real interest rates are the key to spurring new economic activity.

With the deadline for obtaining the federal government‘s Real ID technically upon us, it‘s important to understand that this is not an irritating but necessary program to keep Americans safe. It's the latest example of the government using 9/11 as an excuse to grab more power.

Mainstream economists have been obsessed with finding “optimal” tax rates, and Nicholas Kaldor‘s 1940 formalization of the “optimal” tariff is no exception. Austrian economists, however, know that there is no such thing as an “optimal” tax, given the harm taxation causes.

The Trump White House has enacted tariffs in the belief that other countries are “cheating” by enacting tariffs against US goods and “manipulating” their currencies. However, with the US dollar being the world's reserve currency, the US has engaged in dollar manipulation through inflation.