Mises Wire

The Versailles treaty was in many ways an extension of the imperialistic impulses that caused the Great War in the first place. Even worse, it paved the way for World War II.

A business owner who cannot understand why a customer is not happy — or even very disappointed — with getting a full refund for a faulty product has failed to grasp some very fundamental economic concepts.

Being held accountabile in the real world usually means making reparations for incompetence or malice. But this sort of accountability almost never applies to governments.

There is reason to believe low-interest rate policy has lowered productivity, lessened economic growth, and favored large firms at the expense of small firms and innovation. Greater inequality and stagnating wealth has resulted.

Natural constraints on firm size are numerous, and in a truly free market, large firms would be constantly prone to being broken up and put out of business by competition. And all to often, huge firms become more long-lived due to government intervention.

Some people get richer faster than other people. But what really matters is increasing access to everyday necessities (and luxuries) for everyone.

To borrow a line from Al Gore, this strikes me as a “risky scheme.” 

Creative design of statistics cannot solve the persistent crisis. The core of the problem lies in a misguided economic policy that zombifies the Japanese economy and thus undermines prosperity.

Government policy encourages homeless people to congregate in public areas twice over: first, cities destroy access to very-low-cost housing. Second, city governments often refuse to enforce their own rules of public-space use. Tent cities result.

The gold price is heading up at the moment, but we can still learn a lot from three big collapses in the gold price which occurred after 1934.