Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

The reductive and lazy dismissals of the possibility of bringing about free market systems of healthcare, in addition to the administrative and legislative hurdles imposed by government agencies, have all been brought into the limelight in the wake of the pandemic. However, dealing with them is not the purpose of this article; there are a sufficient number which can easily address the usual complaints. One impact of the pandemic, particularly relevant to political...

It may come as a surprise—though it should not—that one of the very first acts of the new Congress, under the Constitution, was a tax program at least as great as the one imposed on the colonies by Great Britain. It turned out that taxation with representation could be just as oppressive as taxation without representation or worse. It is supreme irony that the very first major act of the new Congress was taxation at a level that would have made Britain proud. The...

The world we come from had lots of death. Every society we know of before the mid-1800s or so saw more than one in four children die during their first year of life. Of those who made it through this first difficult year—through disease, malnutrition, famines, or natural disasters—another quarter or so died before they reached fifteen. Into the 1900s, you had to get into your sixties before your per year risk of death again was as high as it was in your first year of...

Editor’s Note: Interest rates and inflation are certainly connected to efforts on the parts of central banks to loosen and tighten the money supply. These relationships, however, are much more complex than many people suppose. As we’ve seen in recent weeks, with constant talk about what the Fed will do next, expectations are an important factor in how markets respond to central bank actions. In his article “Ten Great Economic Myths,” Murray Rothbard addresses some of...

When David Card was recently awarded the Nobel Memorial Price in Economic Science (along with two other economists), I figured Paul Krugman would weight in, since Card, along with the late Alan Krueger, authored an economic study almost thirty years ago that allegedly debunked standard economic theory on the effects of a binding minimum wage. Krugman did not disappoint. As is his M.O., Krugman cherry-picked his information and then went on to claim that the...

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...