Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

Abstract:  Economics has long history of “rehabilitations,” including W.H. Hutt’s rehabilitation of Say’s law, and Alfred Marshall’s attempt to rehabilitate David Ricardo. The rehabilitation of Frank A. Fetter should be as important as either of these, especially for economists working in the contemporary Austrian tradition. The historical records reveal that for the last century there has been underway a nearly unbroken series of efforts, especially by Austrian...

One of the mandates of the Federal Reserve System is to attain price stability. It is held that price stability is the key as far as economic stability is concerned. What is it all about? The idea of price stability originates from the view that volatile changes in the price level prevent individuals from seeing market signals as conveyed by changes in the relative prices of goods and services. For instance, because of an increase in the demand for apples, the prices...

The labor theory of value has long undermined people’s understanding of the miracles created by markets and rationalized various incarnations of socialism which mangle those miracles. Leonard Read understood why undoing that misunderstanding by all who hold to it, as well as those who just use it as an excuse for what they want government to impose on unwilling citizens, is of immense value to each of us. And in his December 1956 Freeman article, “Unearned Riches,”...

I have taught economics long enough that I have made use of a variety of “trick” questions in introductory courses. I have found them, used well, to be pedagogically helpful. But not everyone agrees. Whether a question is considered a trick depends on one’s viewpoint. From a professor’s point of view, such questions are often a way of revealing whether students have grasped how to put a principle into action or correctly make a critical distinction in a...

With inflation running at over 6 percent and interest rates on savings near zero, the Federal Reserve is delivering a negative 6 percent real (inflation-adjusted) return on trillions of dollars in savings. This is effectively expropriating American savers’ nest eggs at the rate of 6 percent a year. It is not only a problem in 2021, however, but an ongoing monetary policy problem of long standing. The Fed has been delivering negative real returns on savings for more...

By mid 2020, it was already becoming clear that the United States was experiencing a spike in crime. Indeed, by midyear, numerous media outlets were already reporting remarkably large increases in homicide in a number of cities. It was clear that if then-current trends continued, homicide rates in the United States would reach levels not seen in over a decade. With full-year data for 2020 now available from the FBI’s Crime in the USA report, we can see that those...

Over the past year and a half, we have seen some of the largest divides in US state policy in recent history. Certain states such as California have implemented heavy lockdowns, mask mandates, curfews, and other restrictions for months on end, whereas states such as South Dakota never had an official lockdown to begin with. There is now also the heated policy issue of vaccine mandates, with certain locations such as New York City and Los Angeles requiring proof of...

What is the worst thing a government can do when there is high inflation and supply shortages? Multiply spending on energy and material-intensive areas. This is exactly what the US infrastructure plan is doing and—even worse—what other developed nations have decided to copy. If you thought there were problems of supply and difficulties to access goods and services in the middle of a strong recovery, imagine what will happen once central banks and governments turn the...

The vast majority of Mises Wire readers are already familiar with the Austrian business cycle theory. For those who are not, it is an Austrian perspective on what causes the sudden general cluster of business errors that results in a boom-bust cycle, with the busts being the recessions or depressions that we as a society so dread. Murray Rothbard explains this process in his America’s Great Depression: In sum, businessmen were misled by bank credit inflation to...

Vaccine mandates are much easier to enforce thanks to the spread of government spending, government contracting, and monopolized government services. Original Article: “Employer Vaccine Mandates: When the Feds Pay the Piper, They Call the Tune​” Advocates for vaccine mandates—led by the Biden administration—are apparently unconcerned that the mandates are likely to drive down total employment and reduce access to government services. In many cases these are the...