Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

The government and the mainstream media’s favorite economic statistic is gross domestic product (GDP). If GDP goes up, then the economy is doing well. If GDP shrinks, then the economy is doing poorly, or so it is assumed. It all seems so simple. But GDP tells us no such thing. The economy may be doing poorly when GDP rises. Likewise, the economy may be doing well when GDP falls. How can this be? Although the official statistical components that make up GDP are rather...

No government looking to massively expand its size in the economy and monetize a soaring deficit is going to act against rising prices, despite claiming the opposite. One of the things that surprises citizens in Argentina or Turkey is that their populist governments always talk about the middle classes and helping the poor, yet inflation still soars, making everyone poorer. Inflation is the gradual erosion of the purchasing power of the currency. Governments will...

The chaos economy we’re witnessing is not the fault of the market economy. Rather prices in some areas of the economy need to rise so high and so fast to harmonize supply and demand that entrepreneurs can hardly keep pace. Original Article: “We’re Living in a Chaos Economy. Here’s How to End It.” The Federal Reserve has been increasing the money supply at an explosive rate. The federal budget, deficits, and the trade deficit are record levels. Governments, both...

We wrap up our look at Murray Rothbard’s sprawling two volume An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought with Dr. Joe Salerno, Rothbard’s friend and colleague. This show covers the second volume exclusively, starting with the Frenchman JB Say and working through Ricardo, the British Currency School, John Stuart Mill, and finally Karl Marx. Salerno has penetrating insights about all of these thinkers, from Say’s understanding of production to...

Why do individuals desire to have money, which cannot be consumed and produces nothing? To provide an answer to this one must go back in time to establish how money emerged. Original Article: “Why Does Money Have Value? Not Because the Government Says It Does.“. Why does the dollar bill in our pockets have value? According to some commentators, money has value because the government in power says so. For other commentators the value of money is on account of...

The Berlin “housing crisis” has, of course, many causes. But most, if not all of them, are government made. Unfortunately, however, people blame “capitalists” for their plight. Original Article: “Berliners in 2021 Want to Expropriate Private Housing” On September 6, 2021, the city-state of Berlin, Germany’s capital, held a referendum: voters in Berlin had to decide whether thousands of housing units owned by “large real estate firms” should be nationalized. 56.4...

The current surge in inflation is not due to a shortage of supply as central banks want us to believe. It is primarily due to soaring consumer demand fueled by monetary creation. Original Article: For central bankers and mainstream analysts the recent inflation outburst is only a transitory phenomenon which has nothing or very little to do with the massive monetary and fiscal stimuli unleashed during the pandemic. Although the Fed has recently conceded that price...

Entrepreneurship is a method, and it’s also a mindset. Fabrice Testa has written a book that brilliantly integrates the two: he calls the integration “Super Entrepreneurship,” and his book title is therefore Super Entrepreneurship Decoded (Mises.org/E4B_139_Book). He has the appropriate credentials as a proven super-entrepreneur who has created and nurtured numerous great companies (and successfully sold a couple of them). Fabrice knows the true meaning of the...

There is only one way to describe the fiscal mindset of those in the White House and in Congress who are proposing new federal budgetary expenditure and taxing increases in the trillions of dollars: a fantasy land of financial irrationality. The Biden administration insists on additions to the already bloated American welfare state that will see an expansion in entitlement programs and increased societal dependency on government largess not implemented since Lyndon...

Last week, the media again tried to ratchet up the public’s fear over covid-19 by labeling it more deadly than the 1918 flu epidemic. “COVID-19 Is Now the Deadliest Disease in U.S. History,” reads one headline from an NBC TV affiliate. Considering the realities of cancer and heart disease, that headline is absurdly false. Perhaps the author meant “communicable disease.” A TIME headline was at least arguably factual, declaring, “COVID-19 Is Now the Deadliest Pandemic...