Student Loans: The Continuing Crisis That Is Getting Worse
2023-11-27
The leviathan does not rest in pursuing free universities, creeping ahead unchecked by either reason, law, or accounting principles. Why is student assessment of their federal-debt-financed degrees so low? Why are 26 percent of past payments delinquent? More than 50 percent of students agree that they either studied the wrong major or wasted time and money. Less than half have found work in their major field of study.
Public dialogue is lured into discussing forgiveness amounts, rationalizations, plans, and terms, without specifics about monthly costs or other options, thereby distracted from asking the following question: How have graduates—assertively promised increased income, personal satisfaction, and positive impact on society—now become a new dependent class?
The Department of
Bourne Again
2023-11-24
In his new book Only a Voice: Essays (Verso, 2023), the critic and essayist George Scialabba brings to our attention the wisdom of two authors who analyzed the dangers of war: Randolph Bourne and Dwight Macdonald. In this week’s column, I’d like to discuss what Scialabba says about them.
Bourne will be a familiar name to many readers owing to Murray Rothbard’s praise of him, but he was not a libertarian. Like John Dewey, he was a Progressive and a pragmatist who looked forward to “scientific management” as the way to solve America’s social problems. Scialabba describes Bourne’s view in this way:
In the experimental, antidogmatic, and—not least important—communal character of scientific practice, pragmatists beheld the image of a possible future. Dewey had shown, Bourne wrote, that the
Are Businesses Entitled to a Fair Profit?
2023-11-23
In my experience of public policy discussions, one of the most frequent weasel words used as an intended trump (not Trump) card has been “fair.”
Like another commonly played political trump card, “need,” fairness does not have a clear meaning. That provides a great deal of wiggle room for equivocation, almost always used to justify forcing some Americans to pay for what someone else wants.
Fairness has no universal meaning beyond “more for me or those I care about” or “I want, but I do not want to pay for.” I learned that decades ago from my children, who wielded the word almost exclusively to advance their narrow self-interests. For instance, when my daughter—who as the oldest had more responsibility and a bigger allowance—complained, it was because having more responsibility was “unfair”
Today Is the Best Day of the Year to Rob a Bank
2023-11-22
Depression-era bank robber Willie Sutton, when asked why he robbed banks, replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” By “money,” he meant United States currency. He never indicated how he scheduled his robberies, but some days of the year may be more profitable for bank robberies than others.
Disclaimer: Neither I nor the Mises Wire in any way endorses bank robbery, which is a federal crime.
First, here are some facts about US “folding money,” Federal Reserve notes in denominations of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. The Fed no longer issues $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 bills, but they are still legal tender and may still be in circulation.
This currency is printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing division of the US Treasury, then supplied to Federal Reserve banks for