Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

In my second article on the college problem, I discussed the public policy factors that contribute to the rising cost of higher education. But politics makes its way into education through more than public policy, as professors bring their political views into their classrooms and research. Nothing has contributed more to my personal disillusionment with higher education than seeing the extent to which the ideological problem has affected the university system. At...

Pascal Salin is an economist, professor emeritus at the University of Paris-Dauphine, and was president of the Mont-Pelerin Society from 1994 to 1996. Among the extensive list of books Professor Salin has published, mention can be made of the following titles: La vérité sur la monnaie (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1990), Libéralisme (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2000), Français, n’ayez pas peur du libéralisme (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2007), Revenir au capitalisme pour éviter les...

The subject of time and money has hit a boiling point. Just look at Sri Lanka and Iran, where food riots have turned deadly, or, shall we say, currency riots have. People can’t buy food, and “protesters angry at the soaring prices of everyday commodities including food, have burned down homes belonging to 38 politicians as the crisis-hit country plunged further into chaos, with the government ordering troops to ‘shoot on sight,’” reports invesbrain.com. Murray...

It is commonly held that prices of goods and services can produced by means of supply and demand curves. These curves describe the relationship between the prices and the quantity of goods supplied and demanded. Within the framework of supply-demand curves, an increase in the price of a good is associated with a fall in the quantity demanded and an increase in the quantity supplied. Conversely, a decline in the price of a good is associated with an increase in the...

When a person is free to work, shop, and invest, he brings to each task his knowledge from doing the other tasks. As he works, he has a sense of what it takes to please customers, because he’s also a customer. As he shops, he has a sense of what workers can do for him, because he’s also a worker. As he invests, he has a sense of who adds value best, because he also works to add value and shops for value. Deadtime Makes Economic Control Hard for Everyone Government...

In my previous article on the college problem, I discussed the cultural factors that have contributed to the falling value of a university degree, which I hoped would show that we cannot reduce the decline of higher education to public policy failures. However, bad policy has been a major contributor to the problems plaguing the university system, both at the federal and state levels. President Joe Biden’s plan to eliminate up to $20,000 of student loan debt for...

Popular thinking says that banks are the key factor in the expansion of credit. However, is this really the case? For example, take a farmer Joe that produces two kilograms of potatoes. For his own consumption, he requires one kilogram, and lends the rest for one year to a farmer Bob. The unconsumed one kilogram of potatoes that he agrees to lend is his savings. The precondition for lending is that there must be savings first, as lending must be backed by savings. By...

In today’s world, dominated as it is by the ephemeral, the superficial, and the inconsequential, it can be hard for a rational, dispassionate observer to make sense of what is going on—politically, socially, economically, and philosophically. It is that last aspect that gets the least “oxygen” in mainstream media, in public education, and in pretty much all debates and disagreements we grapple with as a society. Perhaps the very discipline of Philosophy, academically...

According to the establishment survey of employment, released last week by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, total employment increased, month-over-month by 263,000 jobs. The “job market stays strong” reads one CNBC headline, and the new jobs print was hailed as a great achievement of the Biden Administration by MSNBC pundit Steve Benen. Yet, the employment data is possibly the only data that looks good right now, and that’s not much comfort since employment is a...

Jeff Deist recently posed the question “Is College Worth It?” My first thought when I opened the article was that he could have reduced the entire piece to a single word: “no.” This cynicism might seem odd coming from somebody who is nearing the end of a PhD program in history, which takes an average of eight years to complete, not including the years spent acquiring a BA and, for many students, an MA before even starting on the doctorate. But this experience has...