Two hundred and forty-seven years ago this month, a group of American opponents of the Crown’s tax policy donned disguises and set about methodically destroying a shipment of tea imported into Boston by the East India Company. The vandals trespassed on privately owned ships in Boston Harbor and threw the tea into the ocean. These protesters were thorough. Not content with having destroyed most of the company’s imported tea that night, the activists later discovered...
Read More »Individualism and the Industrial Revolution
[Marxism Unmasked (2006)] Liberals stressed the importance of the individual. The 19th-century liberals already considered the development of the individual the most important thing. “Individual and individualism” was the progressive and liberal slogan. Reactionaries had already attacked this position at the beginning of the 19th century. The rationalists and liberals of the 18th century pointed out that what was needed was good laws. Ancient customs that could not...
Read More »What Is the Great Reset? Part I: Reduced Expectations and Bio-techno-feudalism
The Great Reset is on everyone’s mind, whether everyone knows it or not. It is presaged by the measures undertaken by states across the world in response to the covid-19 crisis. (I mean by “crisis” not the so-called pandemic itself, but the responses to a novel virus called SARS-2 and the impact of the responses on social and economic conditions.) In his book, COVID-19: The Great Reset, World Economic Forum (WEF) founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab writes...
Read More »It Should Shock Us That There’s Any Consumer Price Inflation at All
Thanks to lockdowns, high unemployment, and general uncertainty and fear over covid-19, the personal saving rate in the United States in October was 13.6 percent, the highest since the mid-1970s. This is down from April’s rate of 33.7 percent, which was the highest saving rate recorded since the Second World War. Moreover, among those who received “stimulus” checks under the CARES Act, only 15 percent of those surveyed in a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)...
Read More »Trump’s NDAA Veto Threat Should Force a Conversation on Defense Spending
A dirty secret of congressional military spending is that when the government allocates billions in spending, unnecessary, wasteful, and parochial interests quickly find their way into the legislation. Original Article: A dirty secret of congressional military spending is that when the government allocates billions in spending, unnecessary, wasteful, and parochial interests quickly find their way into the legislation. That’s part of the reason President Trump...
Read More »The US Money Supply Was up 37 Percent in November
In November, money supply growth rate was essentially unchanged from October and remains near September’s all-time high. The stabilization we find in money-supply growth in recent months comes after eight months of record-breaking growth in the US which came in the wake of unprecedented quantitative easing, central bank asset purchases, and various stimulus packages. Historically, the growth rate has never been higher than what we’ve seen this year, with the 1970s...
Read More »Entrepreneurial Empowerment: You Are Only as Good as Your Employees
Abstract: As employees are increasingly recognized as an important source of ideas and inspiration, contemporary leadership research finds that the central task of leaders is to empower employees to realize their skills and talents to achieve an organizations’ visions and goals. Drawing on this leadership premise, this study develops the concept of entrepreneurial empowerment (EE). EE has structural and psychological dimensions that empower employees to utilize...
Read More »What “Capitalism” Really Means
[Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow (1979), lecture 1 (1958)] Descriptive terms which people use are often quite misleading. In talking about modern captains of industry and leaders of big business, for instance, they call a man a “chocolate king” or a “cotton king” or an “automobile king.” Their use of such terminology implies that they see practically no difference between the modern heads of industry and those feudal kings, dukes or lords of earlier...
Read More »New Lockdowns and More Regulations Are Disastrous for US Jobs
United States jobless claims have picked up, since the elections and the second wave of coronavirus have slowed down the economic recovery. Uncertainty about tax increases and changes in labor laws, including an increase in the minimum wage, add to the fear of new lockdowns, as employers see the devastating effects of these lockdowns in European employment. While the United States has been able to recover fast and reduce unemployment to 6.8 percent, the eurozone...
Read More »Why the Electoral College Matters
We begin to understand the electoral college when we admit the United States is really supposed to be a collection of member states, and not a single unified nation. Abolishing the EC is likely to worsen national conflict and disunity. Be sure to follow Radio Rothbard at Mises.org/RadioRothbard. You Might Also Like The 2020 Debate: A Breakdown 2020-10-04 Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop talk about Tuesday’s...
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