Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

Anyone who advocates the ideas of the Austrian school of economics, whether broadly and publicly or even in the context of private discussions with friends and acquaintances, will almost immediately find themselves grappling with the tricky question of how to distill the core essence of what Austrian economics actually is, and how to convey those truly definitive characteristics as briefly and simply as possible. Given the nearly 150 years during which Austrian...

“Our country continues to face a difficult and challenging time….People have lost loved ones. Many millions have lost their jobs. There is great uncertainty about the future. At the Federal Reserve, we are strongly committed to using our tools to do whatever we can, for as long as it takes…to ensure that the recovery will be as strong as possible, and to limit lasting damage to the economy” –Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, June 10, 2020 America is...

Donald Trump’s economic populism, and his break with the established post-war conservative movement, has created an opening for new types of conservatism. Among these is the anti-market wing of the movement characterized by a renewed enthusiasm for trade controls, more spending on welfare programs, and more government regulation in the everyday lives of ordinary Americans. The economic agenda has been voiced perhaps most enthusiastically by pundit Tucker Carlson and...

The political theorist Michael J. Sandel is a popular teacher at Harvard, and his lectures circulate widely on YouTube and elsewhere. He attracted attention as a serious political theorist with his critical work on John Rawls, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (1982). As most readers will know, I’m no fan of Rawls, and it’s easy to find poor arguments in his A Theory of Justice. But Sandel totally misunderstands him, and his attack on Rawls fails. From the...

The €750 billion stimulus plan announced by the European Commission has been greeted by many macroeconomic analysts and investment banks with euphoria. However, we must be cautious. Why? Many would argue that a swift and decisive response to the crisis with an injection of liquidity that avoids a financial collapse and a strong fiscal impulse that cements the recovery are overwhelmingly positive measures. But history and experience tell us that the risk of...

[Editor’s Note: this article is adapted from a 2003 essay in the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics entitled “New Keynesian Monetary Views: A Comment.” As economists abandon theory in favor of makeshift plans to flood the economy with stimulus, Hülsmann here provides some helpful reminders of the fundamental problems behind the current economic consensus on money.] The essential fallacy of John Maynard Keynes and his early disciples was to cultivate the monetary...

[This article is part of the Understanding Money Mechanics series, by Robert P. Murphy. The series will be published as a book in late 2020.] In chapter 8 we presented Ludwig von Mises’s explanation of how bank credit expansion causes the boom-bust cycle, what is now known as Austrian business cycle theory. However, the reigning view today in both academia and the popular media is the Keynesian explanation, derived from John Maynard Keynes’s famous 1936 book The...

Whining and complaining about inequality is a growth industry. Thomas Piketty’s book (or perhaps a large virtue-signaling paperweight), about how the rich are getting richer, achieved bestseller status and is now a movie. Understanding the flaws in the wealth inequality argument is increasingly important, because the communist wing of the Democratic Party is now openly advocating a wealth tax. In this article I will explain why measures of wealth inequality...

Scandinavian welfare states continue to allure leftist onlookers across the world. The Nordic welfare model is marketed as a humane alternative to the cutthroat nature of Western capitalism. It received a massive boost when Vermont senator Bernie Sanders campaigned on emulating these countries in both of his presidential runs during 2016 and 2020. But it’s not just your typical Bernie Bro that’s obsessing over the Nordic model. Technocrats at the Organisation for...

. [Review of Amity Shlaes, Great Society: A New History (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2019).] Most people associate the Great Society initiative with Lyndon Baines Johnson. There is very good reason for that, to be sure. As president, Johnson, the “master of the Senate,” was the driving force behind the raft of legislation that passed during his administration, the 1964 and 1965 legislation that framed and filled in his vision for a “great society” in which the...