Mises Wire

For conservative populists, Wall Street now is the Washington establishment, indistinguishable from the oligarchs of Silicon Valley; Washington, DC; and the New York Times.

There are plenty of sound reasons to oppose government minimum wage laws, but there is one objection making the rounds that is based on bad economics and should be avoided, and that’s the "businesses will pass on the costs to consumers" objection.

What works in a clinical setting may have totally different outcomes when applied as a matter of "public health." Indeed, one-size-fits-all public health measures can often lead to unintended and unwanted results. 

In an unhampered market, there is no such thing as "excess" consumption of imports. But thanks to the creation of monopoly banks like the Bank of North America, an inflationary expansion of bank credit led to an artificial expansion of imports.

Today would have been Burt Blumert's ninety-second birthday

An unheralded work on the Austrian business cycle that rivals the work of the greats is Jesús Huerta de Soto’s Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles, which outlines a multistate process of boom and bust. 

Placing thousands of troops on the streets of the nation’s capital could be a ticking time bomb. The longer the National Guard is deployed in Washington, the greater the peril of a Kent State–caliber catastrophe. 

The claim that the US needs an immense and varied nuclear arsenal "does serve one purpose: it keeps military budgets wondrously high."

It is only through the increase in capital goods, i.e., through the enhancement and the expansion of the infrastructure, that labor can become more productive and earn a higher hourly wage. 

Centrally planned economies often stick with terrible ideas for many years. But markets can take bad products, learn from them, and turn them into great products that give the public what it wants and needs.