Mises Wire

Central planners cannot calculate the costs and benefits of environmental policy.

As long as there is still room for pushing the market interest rate down even further, the chances are reasonably good that the boom continues, and that the bust will be postponed into the future.

Loose monetary policy can get people to use idle resources. But this new economic activity will likely be in the service of bubble industries that don't create real wealth. Moreover, these bubbles create many idle resources of their own when the bust comes.

The State of California is now forcing insurance companies to cover homeowners who put their houses in some of the most fire-prone areas. What could go wrong?

For an advocate of civil republicanism, you could be drafted into the army, or taxed at very high rates, and that's fine because you participated in a process (democracy) in which you helped pick your own rulers. This view of freedom has a few problems.

It is noteworthy to remember that no other American milieu was more enthusiastic in the endorsement of communism than that of Hollywood.

Despite its supposedly strained relationship with the Saudi regime, the Obama administration, for example, still managed to offer the royals of that kingdom a record $136 billion in US weapons between 2009 and 2017.

There is no more stopping the Mises School. And when the truth finally wins out, because only what is true can also work smoothly in the long run, then the hour of the Austrian School of Economics will have come.

Had consumers in 1938 been uninterested in a feature-length cartoon, Snow White would have bankrupted the Disney studio. Instead, Walt Disney was richly rewarded for his risk-taking.

The true lesson from Japan is that central planners prefer to gradually nationalize the economy before even considering a moderate reduction in government size and control.