Tag Archives: 6b) Mises.org

In Mark Thornton’s The Skyscraper Curse, readers are exposed to the unique phenomenon of the Skyscraper Index and provided with a comprehensive overview of Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT). The Skyscraper Index, as readers learn in the first few pages of the book, shows a correlation between the development of a new tallest building in the world and the business cycle. After exposing readers to the Skyscraper Index, Thornton tactfully explains how the Skyscraper...

[unable to retrieve full-text content]“Russia, Russia, Russia,” the current president used to sarcastically chastise opponents for wondering about 2016 election tinkering from Putin’s principality. Recent MAGA rallies featured “Covid, covid, covid,” with President Trump complaining that the press could think of nothing else.

Some economists, such as the 2017 Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler and his colleague Cass Sunstein, have proposed an unusual justification for government interference with people’s choices. They do not intend, they say, to override the preferences that people have. They don’t want to tell people what they “should” want, according to an external standard that people don’t accept. They claim, however, that accepting the actual preferences people have still leaves room for...

In most economies, inventories are valued at market prices, while in China they are valued by the authorities and adjusted later. This is just one of many ways China manipulates GDP data. The year 2020 will be an extremely tough year for the European economy. Added to an unprecedented drop is a strong impact in the fourth quarter due to the new lockdowns. Morgan Stanley estimates that the eurozone’s GDP will fall by 2.2 percent in the fourth quarter, a 7 percent...

The Austrian school of economics has been all but left by the wayside in economics (e.g., Backhouse 2000). This fate, shared with all “heterodox” approaches that do not fully comply with mainstream dogma, means Austrian theory is at best discounted by other economists. More often, and typically, it is forgotten and a relic of the past. At the same time, Austrian economics is the only school of economic thought that is well represented in the study of...

In 1923 Lenin released a propaganda pamphlet titled Down with the Private Kitchen. It explained how private dinners with one’s family are reactionary, bourgeois, and generally something requiring total destruction. Original Article: “Why Commies Hate Your Thanksgiving Dinner“. This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack. You Might Also Like What Germany...

Dr. Gary Schlarbaum, one of our generous supporters, has again offered to match all donations received through December 7. That means your $10 donation becomes $20, your $25 donation becomes $50, and so on. With a donation of $25 or more, you’ll receive a copy of Jeff Deist’s The Imposers and the Imposed Upon. And, thanks to Gary, your donation doubles. Please donate today. Your gift allows the Mises Institute to be bigger and better in 2021. We want to offer more...

The entrepreneurs try to undertake only such projects as appear to promise profits. This means that they endeavor to use the scarce means of production in such a way that the most urgent needs will be satisfied first, and that no part of capital and labor will be devoted to the satisfaction of less urgent needs as long as a more urgent need, for whose satisfaction they could be used, goes unsatisfied. When the government intervenes to make possible a project which...

In October, money supply growth fell slightly from September’s all-time high, although growth still remains at levels that would have been considered outlandish just eight months ago. October’s easing in money-supply growth 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...

“Small business” is just a government classification. Entrepreneurial businesses serving well-defined communities via creative specialization exhibit enormous economic productivity, energy and dynamism. Such businesses can not be defined quantitatively as small, medium or large. They’re defined by their qualitative impact on their customers’ lives. Entrepreneurial businesses care differently, and care more. Big businesses must pay attention to size and scale, to...