Category Archive: 6b.) Mises.org

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Taxes Are the Price We Pay for NOT Living in a Civilized Society

2023-04-15

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2023-04-15

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. Taxes are the price we pay for civilization. I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization. —Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. During tax season, many people try to provide you with practical ways to lower your tax bill and mitigate your exposure to both tax payments and reporting. Instead of repeating such advice, I would rather discuss the role of taxes in society or, in particular, why we...

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The Income Tax: Lessons from the Sixteenth Amendment

2023-04-15

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2023-04-15

The income tax is “undoubtedly the most totalitarian of all taxes.1 —Murray Rothbard At the founding of our country, the framers of our Constitution wisely withheld the right to tax incomes from the federal government. With the recent Revolutionary War in mind, the States were reluctant to cede strong taxing powers to a central state. Given the enormous change in how this country regards the income tax, it is instructive to consider its origins....

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Krugman Says It’s Paranoid to Worry About a Fed Digital Currency

2023-04-15

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2023-04-15

Jonathan Newman joins Bob to dissect Paul Krugman's latest NYT op-ed, in which he derides Ron DeSantis as paranoid for thinking a central bank digital currency (CBDC) could be used to control citizens. Krugman's op-ed in the New York Times: Mises.org/HAP391a Bob breaking down negative interest rates: Mises.org/HAP391b [embedded content]

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Hacking Humanity: Transhumanism

2023-04-14

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2023-04-14

[This piece is an excerpt from The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty.] The notion that the world can be replicated and replaced by a simulated reality says a great deal about the beliefs of those who promote the metaverse [treated in the previous chapter]. The conception is materialist and mechanistic at base, the hallmarks of social engineering. It represents the world as consisting of nothing but manipulable matter, or rather, of digital...

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Equality Requires State Violence

2023-04-14

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2023-04-14

In his excellent new book In Defense of Capitalism (Republic Book Publishers, 2023), the historian and political scientist Rainer Zitelmann asks a vital question about inequality. In asking this question, he makes a move characteristic of his work. Demands to reduce inequality of wealth and income are widespread, and often debates about proposals to do this are centered in political philosophy. Do people have natural rights to their property that...

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The FBI’s New Target: Catholic Churches

2023-04-14

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2023-04-14

On this episode of Radio Rothbard, Ryan McMaken and Tho Bishop discuss recent reveals about new lows for the FBI. Ryan discusses new reports about the targeting of traditional Catholic churches and the history of the American Stasi, while Tho highlights new evidence about the role of federal agents in escalating January 6. [embedded content] Recommended Reading "The FBI’s Forgotten Criminal Record" by Jim Bovard:...

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What If the Dollar Falls?

2023-04-14

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2023-04-14

The past few weeks, major countries have been moving away from the US dollar, raising doubts about the dollar’s long-dominant role in the world. Eight weeks ago, it was just pariah nations like Iran or Russia trying to de-dollarize. Now it’s Brazil, France, even Saudi Arabia—the lynchpin of the decades-long “petrodollar” arrangement. If the dollar does lose its position as the global reserve currency, it will be catastrophic for the American...

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Why Do Most Countries Have their Own Currency? Governments Wanted It that Way.

2023-04-13

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2023-04-13

Among the many facts of modern life that are accepted without question by most ordinary people is that it is somehow perfectly natural, expected, and unremarkable that every sovereign state should have its own currency. We see this everywhere in names such as "the U.S. dollar" or "the Chinese yuan" or "the Japanese yen." Indeed, among the 203 sovereign states of the world, there are nearly as many separate national...

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Why Do Banks Still Fail?

2023-04-13

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2023-04-13

As we know, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was taken over by the Feds after a bank run. Despite assurances from SVB that they were sound, they obviously failed to understand their precarious situation. Based on SVB’s balance sheet, it was technically insolvent. The regulators shut it down and pondered what to do next. A bank run? How could this happen in modern financial America? Doesn’t the government (the Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance...

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Peace is Breaking Out in the Middle East…and Washington is Not Happy!

2023-04-13

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2023-04-13

While we were being distracted by the ongoing Russia/Ukraine war – and Washington’s increasing involvement in the war – tremendous developments in the Middle East have all but ended decades of US meddling in the region. Peace is breaking out in the Middle East and Washington is not at all happy about it! Take, for example, the recent mending of relations between Saudi Arabia and formerly bitter adversaries Iran and Syria. A China-brokered deal...

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Facing the World at 18

2023-04-13

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2023-04-13

My grandson will graduate from a public school in May, and my daughter, his mom, asked me to write a senior letter for him. He’s been part of my life since he was born, and we’re all very proud of him. But what do I tell him about the world he’s about to enter? Right off he already knows his life itself has a claim on it by the State. If he fails to register for the draft, he could be sent to prison and fined $250,000. With enlistments falling off...

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Bitcoin 2023

2023-04-12

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2023-04-12

Come visit the Mises Institute's booth at Bitcoin 2023! Join thousands in Miami Beach, FL for the world's biggest annual celebration of Bitcoin. The conference will start Thursday, May 18 and conclude Saturday, May 20.  Buy event tickets here, and be sure to use the discount code MISESB23 at checkout to receive 10% off your registration.

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Peak EV: Electric Vehicles Will Fade as Their True Costs Become Clear

2023-04-12

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2023-04-12

“On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency plans to announce tough new tailpipe emission standards designed to effectively force the auto industry to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars,” reports The Verge, with the provocative headline “The End Is Nigh for Gas-Powered Cars.” Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) is the newest religion, and we all know who the practitioners are. Electric vehicle (EV) owners sing...

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How the Woke Left Is Destroying Education

2023-04-12

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2023-04-12

For decades, providing students with the highest quality of education was a key objective in many countries because doing so would facilitate scientific progress and innovation, support social and economic development, and raise living standards. In recent years, however, the woke Left has garnered an increasingly prominent role in the education systems of many Western countries, and its adherents have been significantly altering many of the...

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Professor Shawn Ritenour: The Vital Role Of The Entrepreneur In Economic Development

2023-04-12

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2023-04-12

Entrepreneurship is well-defined in economics, and well-recognized as the engine that drives economic growth. That means people enjoying greater well-being, including but not limited to material prosperity. But economic growth can be uneven. Some countries, some regions, and even some firms do not generate the same levels of economic growth as others. How do we understand this variability? We look for what holds entrepreneurship back....

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Do We Need a “National Divorce”? It’s Not a New Idea

2023-04-12

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2023-04-12

News reports have been studded in recent weeks with talk of a “national divorce.” Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has been the face of the national divorce movement, but she is hardly alone in her view that Republican and Democrat states need to go their separate ways. For example, a March poll of American adults found that 20 percent of respondents favored splitting the country up along red and blue lines. At the state level, too,...

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The World War Boom and ’46 Bust: Why War Does Not Keep Us Out of Recessions

2023-04-11

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2023-04-11

When I took my high school’s twentieth-century world history class, both the teacher and workbooks claimed repeatedly that World War II took us out of the Great Depression. Why would anyone question this? After all, unemployment went down. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics measured the unemployment rate from 1929 onward. In 1939 the unemployment rate stood at 17.2 percent. By 1942 it was at 4.7 percent, and by 1944 it was at 1.2 percent. Professor...

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The Current Farm Bill Fraud: Government as Usual

2023-04-11

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2023-04-11

The 2018 Farm Bill is due to expire this year, and US lawmakers have already begun working out the next version. This food-related omnibus bill was introduced ninety years ago as a “temporary” measure during the Great Depression. It’s been reauthorized by Congress every five years since, and recent ones cobble together two seemingly unrelated programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly called food stamps, and federal...

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Chapter 9: Regulatory Intervention

2023-04-10

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2023-04-10

Part III: Intervention, Chapter 9: Regulatory Intervention How to Think about the Economy: A Primer. Narrated by John Quattrucci.

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Conclusion: Action and Interaction

2023-04-10

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2023-04-10

Conclusion: Action and Interaction, How to Think about the Economy: A Primer. Narrated by John Quattrucci.

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