What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order....
Read More »Say “No” to Nuclear Power Interventions
An August 17, 2024 article, at oilprice.com, entitled, “A New Era for Nuclear Power in the US” describes US government funding and intervening to reopen closed or closing nuclear power electric generating plants (nuclear) to support their green transition policies from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).The IRA provides $6 billion financial support to nuclear power plants at risk of closure—$1.2 billion per year from FY2022 through FY2026. The new federal program...
Read More »Tariff Increases vs. Tax Cuts
News feeds are stuffed full of reports and opinions about President Trump’s tariff increases on Mexico, Canada, China, and the EU. Then the add-on story is about the tax cut legislation—extending President Trump’s tax cuts to the coming years.The media is spinning the story as a political hot potato: can tariff increases make up for the future revenue losses from extending the income tax reductions from President Trump’s first term?This is a false scenario, and a...
Read More »Egalitarian Interventionists: Why Politicians Love “Equality”
It is difficult to find a seemingly more unobjectionable term that “equality” is the modern West and America. Equality is often understood to be an unqualified good and part of the American creed: “all men are created equal.”The main reasons politicians love “equality” are because it is supposedly unquestionable in its obvious justice, slippery in definition, and unachievable. Consider the shifting definitions. “Equality” can mean equality before the law or rule of...
Read More »Trump’s Slush Fund
In his February 3 Executive Order, President Trump directed his minions to begin planning for establishment of a “Sovereign Wealth Fund” that he originally touted in a speech to the Economic Club of New York last September. The fund would be on the order of $2 trillion, investing in things like manufacturing hubs, defense, and medical research. The order states:It is the policy of the United States to maximize the stewardship of our national wealth for the sole...
Read More »Radical Reconstruction and State Omnipotence
In his book Omnipotent Government, Ludwig von Mises traces the shift in Europe from individualism to state omnipotence, highlighting the disastrous effects of empowering government to run every aspect of social and economic life:Men now seem eager to vest all powers in governments, i.e., in the apparatus of social compulsion and coercion. They aim at totalitarianism, that is, conditions in which all human affairs are managed by governments. They hail every step...
Read More »Jean-Baptiste Say: Neglected Champion of Laissez-Faire
Beyond some rudimentary facts, very little is available in English about the life of J.B. Say. He was born in Lyons, France, to middle-class Huguenot parents, and spent most of his early years in Geneva and London. As a young man, he returned to France in the employ of a life insurance company, and soon became an influential member of a group of strongly pro-free- market intellectuals. Indeed, Say was the first editor of La Decade Philosophique , a journal...
Read More »The Fort Knox Gold Was Stolen From the American People
What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order....
Read More »Let’s Be Realistic
[The Lecturer’s Art: Gems of American History by Walter A. McDougall. Encounter Books, 2025. xxii + 291 pp.]The historian Walter McDougall is not a libertarian, but he criticizes the Progressives and Woodrow Wilson in a similar way to Murray Rothbard. He does so from the perspective of “realism.” Although people benefit from cooperation, realists maintain, their desires for wealth and power often lead them to act in ways that violate morality and go against their...
Read More »Educating for Liberty: Welcome and Opening Remarks
What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order....
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