Category Archive: 6b.) Mises.org

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How Fast Should the Money Supply Grow?

2023-01-31

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2023-01-31

Some economists have suggested that inflation results when the money supply expands faster than the rate at which goods and services are produced. They correctly point out that this expansion of the money supply will generally lead to rising prices. But what most economists fail to mention is that inflation can exist even when prices are stable.

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Do Correlations Help Define Money?

2023-01-30

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2023-01-30

According to popular thinking, the government’s definition of money is of a flexible nature. Sometimes it could be M1, and at other times it could be M2 or some other M money supply. M1 includes currency and demand deposits. M2 includes all of M1, plus savings deposits, time deposits, and money market funds.

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Raise the Social Security Age to (At Least) 75

2023-01-29

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2023-01-29

On January 10, the French government announced plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The change would mean that after 2027, workers in France would have to work 43 years to qualify for a government pension, instead of 42 years. French workers promptly took to the street in protest decrying even this very small reduction government welfare. 

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In Defense of Covid “Price Gouging”

2023-01-27

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2023-01-27

The recent inflationary episodes in the USA have led to the emergence of several different explanations, ranging from overexpansion of the money supply to supply-side constraints, not to mention the role of rising markups along with price gouging and greed for profits. Each emphases the unique role that the category has played in the elevated price level.

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Questioning the Military Necessity of Dropping Atomic Bombs on Japanese Cities

2023-01-27

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2023-01-27

One of the most devastating moments in American history took place on August 6 and August 9, 1945, with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Approximately three hundred thousand civilians, forty-three thousand soldiers, forty-five thousand Korean slave laborers, and over a thousand American citizens (including twenty-three prisoners of war) would die.

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Joe Johnson workouts with Mariano Sanchez and Andrew Moran in Miami

2023-01-27

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European Shadow Unemployment Is a Real Problem

2023-01-26

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2023-01-26

The latest jobs report in the United States shows strengths and weaknesses. Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 223,000 in December, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent. However, the United States job market continues to show negative real wage growth, the employment-to-population ratio is 60.1 percent, and the force participation rate is 62.3 percent.

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Yes, the Minimum Wage Harms the Economy

2023-01-26

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2023-01-26

The 2021 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to David Card, Joshua Angrist, and Guido Imbens. David Card received the award for his paper (coauthored with Alan Krueger) “Minimum Wages and Employment: A Case Study of the Fast-Food Industry in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.”

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Governments Will Make You Poorer Again

2023-01-23

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2023-01-23

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has warned about the optimistic estimates for 2023, stating that it will likely be a much more difficult year than 2022. Why would that be? Most strategists and commentators are cheering the recent decline in price inflation as a good signal of recovery.

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The Fed’s Quantitative Easing Gamble Costs Taxpayers Billions

2023-01-23

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2023-01-23

The year 2023 is shaping up to be a challenging one for the Federal Reserve System. The Fed is on track to post its first annual operating loss since 1915. Per our estimates, the loss will be large, perhaps $100 billion or more, and this cash loss does not count the unrealized mark-to-market losses on the Fed’s massive securities portfolio.

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The Trillion-Dollar Coin Idea Is Just Another Way to Rip Us Off

2023-01-21

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2023-01-21

Here we go again. Every few years in Congress there is a purely political battle over the debt ceiling. We're supposed to be horrified and worried that the US might default on some of its debt. Some commentators will insist the US has never defaulted, and that default be a disaster.

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Fiat Money Inflation Not Only Raises Prices but Also Undermines Division of Labor

2023-01-20

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2023-01-20

The line for the self-checkout registers at my neighborhood Albertsons stretched into the store’s produce section. Is this human progress? I wondered, scanning my groceries—this just after I had filled my car’s gas tank at a not-so-convenient convenience store near work.

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Why the Fed Is Bankrupt and Why That Means More Inflation

2023-01-19

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2023-01-19

In 2011, the Federal Reserve invented new accounting methods for itself so that it could never legally go bankrupt. As explained by Robert Murphy, the Federal Reserve redefined its losses so as to ensure its balance sheet never shows insolvency.

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The Rise and Fall of Good Money: A Tale of the Market and the State

2023-01-19

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2023-01-19

Ludwig von Mises's book The Theory of Money and Credit is a masterwork of monetary theory. Despite being written in the early twentieth century, its arguments and conclusions are still valid and interesting today. Mises describes five characteristics that are vital to the function of money: marketability, durability, fungibility, trustworthiness, and convenience.

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The Fed Is a Purely Political Institution, and It’s Definitely Not a Bank.

2023-01-18

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2023-01-18

Those who know Wall Street lore sometimes recall that Fed chairman William Miller—Paul Volcker’s immediate predecessor—joked that most Americans believed the Federal Reserve was either an Indian reservation, a wildlife preserve, or a brand of whiskey. The Fed, of course, is none of those things, but there’s also one other thing the Federal Reserve is not: an actual bank. It is simply a government agency that does bank-like things.

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Australia: The Nation Founded by British Convicts Embraced Entrepreneurship

2023-01-17

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2023-01-17

Australia’s superb performance on measures of international development has earned her the admiration of many. Few countries can boast such stellar achievements in economic and social affairs. Currently, Australia has the highest median wealth per adult in the world and outperforms the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average in civic engagement, health, education, and other dimensions of well-being.

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The Politicization of Procreation: The Ultimate in “the Personal Is Political”

2023-01-17

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2023-01-17

In the ultimate example of “the personal is political,” families form, break up, or expand due to US presidential elections according to a recent article in the American Economic Review. Apparently, the alternative responses of doom or elation that occasions electoral politics is so extreme that the losers couldn’t bear to bring a child into such a world, while the winners . . . well, you know.

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Real Wages Fall for the Twenty-First Month as Rent and Food Prices Keep Rising

2023-01-16

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2023-01-16

The federal government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released new price inflation data today, and according to the report, price inflation during the month decelerated slightly, coming in at the lowest year-over-year increase in fifteen months. 

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The Great Depression’s Patsy

2023-01-15

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2023-01-15

The culprit responsible for the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the Great Depression can be easily identified—the government. To protect fractional reserve banking and generate a buyer for its debt, the US government created the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and put it in charge of the money supply.

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The Government Throws Money at Heart Disease, but Prevention Is Better than Cure

2023-01-14

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2023-01-14

You’re more likely to die of heart disease than anything else, partly because, well, if nothing else gets you, your heart will give out. And a heart attack could cost you upwards of $760,000 these days, when you consider hospital charges, prescription drugs, additional care for the rest of your life, and then indirect costs like loss of time at work.

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