Mises Wire

Over the past two weeks, the top five most-read Mises Daily articles are: 

But just because the Trans Pacific Partnership deal may be dead for now doesn't mean it won't be back in modified form. In any case, as I noted earlier this month in Mises Daily, we need real free trade, not the latest global deal for state-controlled trade and regulation. 

James Pethokoukis at The Week suggests that Hillary Clinton will win because the economy is so good. In the other hand, something bad could happen such as Janet Yellen reading "too much austrian economics."

Mises Daily Thursday by Peter St. Onge: 

What if machines took most of our jobs? Things would become less expensive, and humans would become wealthier in real terms, just as has happened since the Industrial Revolution began. Fear of labor-saving technology continues unabated, nonetheless.

Levi Russell and Michael Langemeier examine Kansas agriculture as a case study illustrating Austrian Business Cycle Theory:

In first-world economies, the agriculture sector is characterized by investment in expensive and highly-specialized equipment. While some agricultural products are “close to consumption,” the network of highly specialized processing and transportation equipment necessary for the functioning of modern agriculture indicates that this sector is characterized by more roundabout production processes. Since the ABCT is primarily a theory of malinvestment in the more roundabout stages of production, analysis of the agricultural sector of the economy is relevant to the study of ABCT.This paper examines data for the production agriculture industry to determine whether business cycles in industry are consistent with the ABCT. Time series analysis using vector autoregression and other methods is conducted. Results are mixed, but strong arguments in favor of ABCT effects in agriculture are made.

Choosing between two candidates is analogous going to Walmart and being presented with two shopping carts already filled with items. Everyone will leave the store with the same cart of goods. Each cart contains products that a person may want and products that one wouldn't choose to have, but the voter is not able to take anything out of either cart.

Noah Smith joins sides with Paul Romer&n

Mises Daily Wednesday by Andrew Syrios: 

Believing his record on economic predictions to be impeccable, Paul Krugman has declared himself "Krugtron the Invincible." Unfortunately for him, a closer look at this record leaves quite a bit to be desired when it comes to accurately predicting the future

From Edward Fuller in the Spring 2015 issue of The Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics: 

This paper examines Roger W. Garrison’s interpretation of John Maynard Keynes. Garrison has given economists a useful way to illustrate Keynes’s theory, but there are two fundamental problems with Garrison’s interpretation. First, the shape of the Hayekian triangle cannot be fixed in Keynes’s theory. Second, Garrison’s interpretation contradicts the IS-LM model. The demand constraint is derived from the IS-LM model and the IS-LM demand constraint is used to illustrate Keynes’s theory.

At the heart of the egalitarian left is the pathological belief that there is no structure of reality; that all the world is a tabula rasa that can be changed at any moment in any desired direction by the mere exercise of human will—in short, that reality can be instantly transformed by the mere wish or whim of human beings.