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Tag Archives: Economics

The death of the middle class is the death of civil society

Part II of II by Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, Switzerland The blame game  As we know from every crisis in human history, and especially the more recent ones, the most important item on any politician’s agenda is to find someone else to blame for it. It can be a foreign foe in the form of a hostile state, it can be an “enemy within”, usually long-standing political opponents and their supporters, or it can even be some invisible villain like a virus. To the politician, it...

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The death of the middle class is the death of civil society

Part I of II by Claudio Grass, Hünenberg See, Switzerland The middle class in the West has been shrinking for years, but after the covid crisis and especially after the inflation explosion, whatever was left of it is now basically under threat of extinction. This has immense sociopolitical implications. When any society, at any point in history, becomes divided into haves and have nots, instability and dangerous tensions are quick to follow. The decline of Reason and respect for...

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The Elusive International Order

The liberal international order was a screen and a sham. But this does not mean that liberalism is lost. The following longform piece was an essay submitted in May 2022 to the Mont Pelerin Society for the Hayek Essay Contest on the topic of international order. Although rejected, the subject is important and of interest for our readers. An international authority which effectively limits the powers of the state over the individual will be one of the best safeguards...

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A High Price is a Good Price – Under the Right Conditions

Overpaying for something that could be found in a different store (or online), under the right circumstances, makes both parties happier. After looking around a bit, I asked the cashier at a nearby convenience store if he had any nine-volt batteries because I didn’t see any on the shelf. To my good fortune, he did. I asked for two of them and pulled a $5 bill out of my wallet as he rang them up. “$12,” he said. I gasped a little, put the $5 away, and reached for my...

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What happens if the debt ceiling raises

It’s that time again when the US government has to prepare itself for an internal battle to raise the debt ceiling so it can meet various obligations. This is a merry dance that has been danced before, as we mention below. For sure, every time it happens fewer and fewer people are convinced of the trustworthiness of the US dollar. This combined with the recent announcement by Saudi Arabia of its willingness to consider trading in currencies other than the US Dollar...

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Here are three things you can learn from the Fed

Anyone who has decided to buy gold, or follows the gold price will be aware of how powerful the US Federal Reserve is. This year the Federal Reserve will turn 110 years old, only in recent years is dollar hegemony appearing to falter. Below we look at the central bank’s origins and three lessons we can learn from the history of the world’s most powerful bank, in order to help our investment decisions in 2023.  Is the FED’s institutional history about to repeat...

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Your Wealth Will Save Central Banks!

Today we ask, what is wealth? As we start a new year many will be looking at their portfolios and wondering what 2023 will have in store for them. Similar to 2022, we suspect there will be a lot of unknowns. As with anything unforeseen, it’s a good idea to have some insurance. This is why there were record levels of gold buying last year, and we expect the same in the coming months; because people want to protect their wealth with the insurance that gold offers....

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“Markets and civil society are win-win institutions, government and politics are zero-sum.”

Interview with Jeff Deist, President Mises Institute, Auburn, USA Division, friction and polarization have been on the rise in the West for at least a decade, but the escalation we saw during the “covid years” was especially worrying. Over the last year, this “worry” has become a truly pressing concern, even a real emergency one might argue, as inflationary pressures and an actual war were added to the mix of political and social tensions. Going into 2023, there are...

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“Markets and civil society are win-win institutions, government and politics are zero-sum.”

Interview with Jeff Deist, President Mises Institute, Auburn, USA Division, friction and polarization have been on the rise in the West for at least a decade, but the escalation we saw during the “covid years” was especially worrying. Over the last year, this “worry” has become a truly pressing concern, even a real emergency one might argue, as inflationary pressures and an actual war were added to the mix of political and social tensions.   Going into 2023, there are many...

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A grateful goodbye to 2022, a hopeful hello to 2023

Even though what we saw during the height of the pandemic was shocking enough for most people, what we saw during 2022 was arguably even more astonishing. During the lockdowns and quarantines and the forced business shutdowns, the sheer number of all the rights and freedoms that were coercively “suspended”, as though that’s a thing one can do with true liberty, left so many fellow citizens in disbelief. However, what many people found even more horrifying was the way it was seemingly...

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