Opponents of secession say secession is wrong if some people in the population don't want it and say they will be worse off. The American revolutionaries disagreed and seceded anyway. Original Article: "Secession: Should the American Revolutionaries Have Quit to Appease the Loyalists?" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. [embedded content]...
Read More »Public Transit Projects Are the Perfect Recipe for Financial Disaster
The largest urban mass-transit systems across the US are entering an all too familiar point in their long history: another looming financial disaster caused by financial mismanagement and the consequences of covid. No urban transit system exemplifies this problem more than the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York. Ridership in New York has not rebounded to precovid levels, and the MTA is projected to have a funding gap of $1.6 billion in 2026...
Read More »Poor People in Developing Countries Find Alternatives to Commercial Banking
People are innovative—if government doesn't get in the way. Entrepreneurs in developing countries find alternatives for people cut off from commercial banking services. Original Article: "Poor People in Developing Countries Find Alternatives to Commercial Banking" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. [embedded content]...
Read More »The Impossibility of Equality
[Excerpt from chapter 7 of Power and Market in Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 1308–12.] Probably the most common ethical criticism of the market economy is that it fails to achieve the goal of equality. Equality has been championed on various “economic” grounds, such as minimum social sacrifice or the diminishing marginal utility of money (see the chapter on taxation above). But in recent years economists have recognized that they cannot justify...
Read More »The Coming Recession Will Be a Global One
Over one hundred years ago, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises discovered what causes the boom-bust business cycle. As Mises explained, the boom is caused by central and commercial banks creating money out of thin air. This lowers interest rates, which encourages businesses to borrow this newly created money to fund capital-intensive investment projects. The bust is caused when the money creation process slows. It is then that businesses discover there are not...
Read More »One Year Later in Ukraine: Washington and NATO Got It Very Wrong
It’s been a year since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In spite of claims from the regime and its media allies that Russia was the next Third Reich and would soon roll through half of Europe, it turns out that was never even remotely true. In fact, things have unfolded more or less just like we predicted here at mises.org: the Russians aren’t even close to occupying any place in Europe beyond eastern Ukraine. It’s not Munich 1938. Economic sanctions have not...
Read More »When the Private Sector Is the Enemy
Rest in peace, "technolibertarianism." There was a time when many believed tech entrepreneurs would usher in a new era of freedom. Unfortunately, the new tech elites are technocratic collaborators with the regime. Original Article: "When the Private Sector Is the Enemy" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. [embedded content]...
Read More »Debunked: “Red States Are Just Welfare Queens”
This episode of Radio Rothbard revisits a point in our previous episode about the popular claim on leftwing Twitter that red-state America would be a "third world country" without support from the federal government. Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop discuss Ryan's recent article on the topic, as well as the legacy of populist politics, and the unseen consequences of uniparty addiction to DC money. Recommended Reading "No, Red State Economies Don't Depend on a...
Read More »Saudi Arabia’s Quandary: The End of the Petrodollar
In 1971 Richard Nixon took the US off the last feeble vestiges of the gold standard, otherwise known as the Bretton Woods Agreement. That system had been a bizarre gold-dollar hybrid where the dollar was the world reserve currency but the US agreed to keep the dollar backed by gold. Henry Hazlitt’s book From Bretton Woods to World Inflation explains the consequences of this situation well. The end of this system left a vacuum at the heart of world financial affairs,...
Read More »Why You Should Fear “Bipartisan” Agreements in Congress
When we see real bipartisan action in Congress, it usually is for the worst. Original Article: "Why You Should Fear "Bipartisan" Agreements in Congress" This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. [embedded content] Tags: Featured,newsletter
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