Category Archive: 6b.) Mises.org

Filter archive by: Show All Show only Articles Show only Videos

Tax Cuts Do Not Cause Inflation. Printing Does.

2022-12-14

by

2022-12-14

The narrative to attack any tax cut and defend any increase in government size is reaching feverish levels. However, we must continue to remind citizens that constantly bloating government spending and increasing the size of monetary interventions are some of the causes of the widespread impoverishment of the middle class.

Read More »

The “Barbarous Relic” Helped Enable a World More Civilized than Today’s

2022-12-13

by

2022-12-13

One of history’s greatest ironies is that gold detractors refer to the metal as the barbarous relic. In fact, the abandonment of gold has put civilization as we know it at risk of extinction. The gold coin standard that had served Western economies so brilliantly throughout most of the nineteenth century hit a brick wall in 1914 and was never able to recover, or so the story goes.

Read More »

Mises’s Critiques of Social Darwinism and of the Concept of Class Struggle

2022-12-13

by

2022-12-13

In his 1922 book, Gemeinwirtschaft, Ludwig von Mises unmasks the intellectual distortion that is social Darwinism. Based on determining the dynamics of socialization through the principle of the division of labor, Mises shows that society is cooperative; that peace, not war, is the father of human progress.

Read More »

The World Needs More Energy and Less Energy Regulation

2022-12-12

by

2022-12-12

Energy is a highly regulated industry across the world. There is less debate about the need for government control when it comes to the oil and gas sector. The arguments that most people accept for government intervention in energy, whether in the name of energy access, national security, or climate change mitigation, all share the same general premise: that energy is too important to be left to the whims of the free market. 

Read More »

Leitrim GAA Podcast: Andy Moran – Sn 3 Ep 1

2022-12-11

by

To kick start season three of the Leitrim GAA Podcast, Senior Football Manager Andy Moran drops in to chat through the departures and newcomers to the Leitrim panel for next season, along with some changes to his backroom staff as they prepare during an busy off season. Moran speaks about the changes to the panel and backroom staff as they look to build on the growth shown this year, 12 months on from his appointment Moran is not putting the feet...

Read More »

The Corporate Fairy Tale Is Dying as Economic Reality Sets In

2022-12-10

by

2022-12-10

At least since 2008, the financial world has been in a financial spiral caused by central banks’ growing monetary impression. As a consequence, key economic concepts (e.g., that business cycles are caused by credit expansion, and higher prices by monetary expansion) started to be considered just “old ideas” and their defenders prophets of the apocalypse.

Read More »

The G7 Cap on Russian Oil Is a Subsidy to China

2022-12-10

by

2022-12-10

There are many mistakes in the G7 agreement to put a cap on Russian oil. The first one is that it does not hurt Russia at all. The agreed cap, at $60 a barrel, is higher than the current Urals price, above the five-year average of the quoted price and higher than Rosneft’s average netback price.

Read More »

Digital Currency: The Fed Moves toward Monetary Totalitarianism

2022-12-09

by

2022-12-09

The Federal Reserve is sowing the seeds for its central bank digital currency (CBDC). It may seem that the purpose of a CBDC is to facilitate transactions and enhance economic activity, but CBDCs are mainly about more government control over individuals. If a CBDC were implemented, the central bank would have access to all transactions in addition to being capable of freezing accounts.

Read More »

Fiat and Gold: Two Fixes for a Broken US Monetary Base

2022-12-08

by

2022-12-08

In the laboratory of history, great inflation followed by great disinflation opens the road to monetary regime change. Sometimes the road leads to a better place. Think of the US return to gold in 1879 following the inflationary issue of greenbacks during the Civil War; or the era of the hard deutsche mark when the German Bundesbank responded to the great inflation and bust of the late 1960s and early 1970s by insulating its money from continuing...

Read More »

Do Falling Prices Cause or Predict a Recession?

2022-12-07

by

2022-12-07

In the midst of excessive US economic and geopolitical uncertainties due to rampant inflation and the continuing Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 7.7 percent October inflation report comes as a small relief. The unemployment rate touched 3.7 percent in October, remaining near the 3.5 percent prepandemic level and slightly above the 3.4 percent natural rate of unemployment of the fourth quarter of 2021.

Read More »

“Classical Liberalism” Will Never Satisfy the Left

2022-12-06

by

2022-12-06

“Today the tenets of this nineteenth-century philosophy of liberalism are almost forgotten. In the United States “liberal” means today a set of ideas and political postulates that in every regard are the opposite of all that liberalism meant to the preceding generations.”

Read More »

Reflections upon the Centennial of Mises’s Socialism

2022-12-06

by

2022-12-06

Ludwig von Mises published Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen über den Sozialismus in 1922 (translated into English as Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, 1951). In more than five hundred pages, the most prominent representative of the Austrian school offers a comprehensive and deep analysis of the “socialist phenomenon.”

Read More »

Economic Progress and Economic Decay: North versus South

2022-12-05

by

2022-12-05

They read like Civil War battlefields: Chattanooga, Tennessee; Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Greer, South Carolina; West Point, Georgia; Montgomery, Alabama; Tupelo, Mississippi; Smyrna, Tennessee. They are the towns and small cities in the Deep South where America now builds its cars and trucks.

Read More »

Total Employed Workers Fell Again in November as Savings and Incomes Fall

2022-12-05

by

2022-12-05

Total employed workers fell for the second month in a row in November, dropping nearly 400,000 workers below the pre-pandemic peak in February 2020. According to new employment data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, the current population survey shows employed workers fell to 158,470,000 in November, down 138,000 from October's total of 158,608,000.

Read More »

The Fed Is Not “a Good Idea that Became Corrupt”: It Always Was Corrupt

2022-12-03

by

2022-12-03

There’s an idea rooted among some libertarians that the Federal Reserve was originally a sound institution but has grown corrupt. As a bankers’ bank, it was fine, they believe, but not as the monster it has grown to be. If we could only go back to the Fed’s founding charter, all would be well.

Read More »

Renewables and EVs in the Grip of Lesseps Syndrome

2022-12-02

by

2022-12-02

Most people are familiar with the Panama Canal, but they probably don’t know the first effort to build the Panama Canal, spanning almost a decade, was by France. Facing considerable initial naysaying and ridicule, Ferdinand de Lesseps had the acumen and drive to construct the Suez Canal. Success was realized after overcoming many obstacles and difficulties. Naturally enough, France turned to him to build a sea-level canal in Panama.

Read More »

Deflation Is Not a Problem: Reversing It Is

2022-12-02

by

2022-12-02

The yearly growth rate of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) fell to 7.7 percent in October from 8.2 percent in September. Note that in October 2021 the yearly growth rate stood at 6.2 percent. Some experts are of the view that it is quite likely that the momentum of the CPI might have peaked.

Read More »

On Secession and Small States

2022-12-02

by

2022-12-02

The international system we live in today is a system composed of numerous states. There are, in fact, about two hundred of them, most of which exercise a substantial amount of autonomy and sovereignty. They are functionally independent states. Moreover, the number of sovereign states in the world has nearly tripled since 1945.

Read More »

Who Really Owns Big Digital Tech?

2022-12-01

by

2022-12-01

By now it should be perfectly clear that the most prominent Big Digital companies are not strictly private, for-profit companies. As I argued in Google Archipelago, they are also state apparatuses, or governmentalities, undertaking state functions, including censorship, propaganda, and surveillance.

Read More »

Who Pays Wealth Tax: The Rich or the Poor?

2022-11-30

by

2022-11-30

The Spanish government’s announcement that it plans to introduce a new “solidarity tax” on the wealth of those who possess over €3 million has again brought to the fore the debate about taxes levied on wealth and capital. The issue is not merely that the announcement is highly politicized in what is already, de facto, a preelection period, nor that it could disrupt the fiscal autonomy of Madrid, Andalusia, and Galicia.

Read More »