Tag Archives: Featured

Ludwig von Mises’s life was dedicated to intellectually combating the evils of socialism, interventionism, inflationism, and tyranny. He recognized that it would always be an uphill battle. Easy money creates artificial good times that empower and enrich the political class; cleaning up the mess after that is difficult.The only solution is for the public to understand the game, to be empowered to see past the cheap political rhetoric, and to identify...

In his review of F.A. Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty, Murray Rothbard takes issue with the Hayekian case for freedom, which rests solely on human ignorance. On this view, reason is dogmatic and tends to lead to totalitarianism, with arrogant despots claiming they have the knowledge to rationally and efficiently plan the social order. As Joe Salerno has shown, Ludwig von Mises took a different approach.In contrast to the Hayekian stress on “spontaneous...

Deficit spending is not a growth tool. It is the recipe for stagnation.The latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) budget and economic outlook estimates show the extent of the challenges of the United States fiscal nightmare.The CBO expects a budget deficit of $1.9 trillion in 2024, a year of alleged robust economic growth and record tax receipts. They expect revenues to reach $4.9 trillion, or 17.2 percent of GDP, in 2024, which will rise to 18.0 percent by 2027...

July is about the Olympics and reaping what was sown in June. The UK and France will have new governments. There will be a new European Commission. China will hold its Third Plenum session, out of which many expect new measures to support the economy.The Bank of Japan may announce a plan to reduce its bond purchases, which are approximately the same as the amount maturing every month and hike rates at the end of July. Reducing its JGB holdings is another step in the...

What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order....

For many years, the relationship between interest rates and economic growth has been a major focus of economic theory and policy discussions. According to Austrian theory, interest rates are an important signal in a market economy that balances the time preferences of borrowers and savers, not only a tool that central banks can manage in an effort to maintain economic stability. Severe economic distortions and malinvestments may result from misinterpreting or...

Human behavior is, to a large extent, socially constructed. People often act based on social norms, expectations, or habits rather than by attempting to ascertain the nature of reality itself. In that context, it is true to say that people’s perceptions of reality are socially constructed, as explained by the Thomas theorem:Another way of looking at this concept is through W.I. Thomas’s notable Thomas theorem which states, “If men define situations as real, they are...

What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order....

What is the Mises Institute? The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order....

[Editor’s Note: This week, a new ruling from the US Supreme court chipped away at the administrative powers of the federal bureaucracy. The case, Loper Bright Ent. vs. Raimondo, largely overturned the 1984 Chevron ruling which had solidified the bureaucracy’s power to interpret laws for itself. That is, rather than require the bureaucracy to seek rulings from federal judges on the interpretation of laws, the US Supreme court in Chevron ruled that federal bureaucrats...