Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

The current baby formula shortage in the United States is a pressing crisis, and many in the media have been rushing to explain how such a thing could have happened. But on close analysis, it appears to share the same root as virtually every other crisis experienced in the modern world: a government promised benefits without costs. Our political leaders either fail to understand or outright ignore the basic, unavoidable limitation on government action, that no...

One of my areas of research in institutional economics is the social behavior of people under different political regimes, what Thomas Schelling called micromotives and macrobehavior. Of course, this topic is directly related to many disciplines, from behavioral economics and political theory to the neurobiology of decision-making and the theory of biological markets. The theme raises the following question: What are the reasons for the broad social support of the...

The Bank of Canada on Wednesday increased its policy interest rate (known as the overnight target rate) from 1.0 percent to 1.5 percent. This was the second fifty–basis point increase since April and is the third target rate increase since March of this year. Canada’s target rate had been flat at 0.25 percent for twenty-three months following the bank’s slashing of the target rate beginning in March 2020. As in the United States and in Europe, price inflation rates...

According to John Maynard Keynes: The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler...

1. The German Rejection of Classical Economics The hostility that the teachings of Classical economic theory encountered on the European continent was primarily caused by political prepossessions. Political economy as developed by several generations of English thinkers, brilliantly expounded by Hume and Adam Smith and perfected by Ricardo, was the most exquisite outcome of the philosophy of the Enlightenment. It was the gist of the liberal doctrine that aimed at the...

The combination of covid lockdowns, money pumping, and attempts to force a new green economy are taking their toll. This is not going away any time soon. Original Article: “It’s Not Just the USA: The Economic Instability Is Global” The actions of the authorities in developed countries, essentially an extension of the Keynesian economic policy discourse, have brought the economies into disrepute. These actions consist of immense stimulus and virtually unfunded...

The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos is perhaps the world’s most unpopular conference, and the WEF’s founder and chairman, Klaus Schwab, one of the world’s most despised figures. Often compared to “Dr. Evil,” the character Mike Meyers played in the Austin Powers series, and routinely likened to a James Bond supervillain on the internet, Schwab is seen as a messianic megalomaniac leading a nefarious cabal of world leaders and corporate heads...

A Selection from The Historical Setting of the Austrian School of Economics. 1. The Beginnings What is known as the Austrian School of Economics started in 1871 when Carl Menger published a slender volume under the title Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftslehre. It is customary to trace the influence that the milieu exerted upon the achievements of genius. People like to ascribe the exploits of a man of genius, at least to some extent, to the operation of his environment...

Persistently loose monetary policies always have negative growth and distributional effects that impair political stability. In extreme cases, there are civil wars and armed conflicts between countries. Original Article: “Inflation, War, and Oil: How Today’s Crises Are Rehashing the 1970s” Consumer price inflation has risen to 8.3 percent in April 2022 in the United States and 7.5 percent in the euro area. This raises the question of who is responsible. In the US,...

As should be clear by now, Francis Fukuyama’s declaration in The End of History: The Last Man (1992) that we had arrived at “the end of history” did not mean that classical liberalism, or laissez-faire economics, had emerged victorious over communism and fascism, or that the final ideological hegemony signaled the end of socialism. In fact, for Fukuyama, the terminus of history was always democratic socialism or social democracy. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe noted in...