Category Archive: 6b.) Mises.org

Why the Money Supply Is Growing Again

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...

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Why People Pay Higher Prices for Some Goods Relative to Others

Why are individuals willing to pay higher prices for some goods relative to other goods? The common reply to this appeals to the laws of supply and demand. But what is behind these laws? To provide a further answer to this question economists refer to the law of diminishing marginal utility. Mainstream economics explains this law in terms of the satisfaction that one derives from consuming a particular good. For instance, an individual may derive...

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The Birth of “Irrational Exuberance”

But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values . . .? — Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, “The Challenge of Central Banking in a Democratic Society,” December 5, 1996John Law, the early eighteenth-century Scottish gambler and financier, thought the best way to revive an ailing economy was to remove the “great scarcity of money,” as he wrote in a 1705 monetary tract. A decade after its publication, he took his ideas to...

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Hayek on the Welfare State

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...

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What is Old School Economics?

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...

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Ctrl+Alt+Regulate: The DMA’s Misguided Reboot of Competition

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...

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Yes, Car Seat Laws Reduce the Birth Rate

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...

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If Republicans Are Against Lawfare, They Shouldn’t Have Unleashed It

One of the hot topics of the 2024 presidential election is the use of what Republicans have called “lawfare” by the Democrats, using the law—and especially criminal law—to go after political opponents by using the system to charge them with questionable crimes. I myself have denounced it here and here.There is no way to justify this use of criminal law except to say that it is a tool by political and economic elites to accomplish the same thing as...

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Ten Lessons on Us Foreign Policy from Enough Already

Enough Already by Scott Horton is a must-read for anyone who wants to know the truth about US foreign policy in the Middle East for the last 35 years. Horton starts his exposé with the 9/11 tragedy, and then details all the terror wars up until today. Among all the facts and figures, Horton teaches ten important lessons. Each chapter focuses on a specific country, but these lessons are woven throughout each.Lesson 1—The US is Not Loyal to Its...

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Gresham’s Law: Why Bitcoin Will Save the World

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...

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Money-Supply Growth Hit a 23-Month High, and the Fed Wants More

The days of slowing and falling money supply growth rates are over. Money-supply growth accelerated, year over year, in August by the largest amount in 23 months, and August was the third month in four months that the money supply has grown, year over year. The current trend in money-supply growth suggests a significant turnaround from more than a year of historically large contractions in the money supply that occurred throughout much of 2023 and...

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No Central Bank Wants to Stop Price Inflation

Many citizens want more government control of the economy to curb rising prices. It is the worst strategy imaginable. Interventionist governments never reduce consumer prices because they benefit from inflation, dissolving their political spending commitments in a constantly depreciated currency. Inflation is the perfect hidden tax. The government makes the currency less valuable by issuing more units of fiat money, partially dissolves its debt in...

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Kamala Harris’s Price-Fixing Scheme Would Lead to Food Shortages

Kamala Harris has suggested that, if elected, her administration would “pass the first ever federal ban on price gouging on food.” She has also stated that she would undertake several interventions into the healthcare industry, including a promise to “cap the cost of insulin at $35 for all Americans.”These proposals represent nothing other than the promise to institute price-fixing on groceries and aspects of healthcare. To end so-called “price...

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What Was Mises’s Position on Fractional Reserve Banking?

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...

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Nagel on Libertarianism and Other Things

The philosopher Thomas Nagel can always be relied on for thought-provoking arguments, and in what follows, I’m going to discuss several that are relevant to libertarianism. These arguments are to be found in Nagel’s book Equality and Partiality (Oxford, 1991).Nagel takes for granted the existence of the state, but his arguments can be adapted to an anarcho-capitalist society as well, though that is not a task I’ll pursue here. In any decent...

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Nagel on Libertarianism and Other Things

The philosopher Thomas Nagel can always be relied on for thought-provoking arguments, and in what follows, I’m going to discuss several that are relevant to libertarianism. These arguments are to be found in Nagel’s book Equality and Partiality (Oxford, 1991).Nagel takes for granted the existence of the state, but his arguments can be adapted to an anarcho-capitalist society as well, though that is not a task I’ll pursue here. In any decent...

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Who Starts Business Cycles? Banks or the Fed?

Do banks receive deposits and then loan some of that money out? Or do they first extend loans that turn into deposits in the banking system?Some critics of Austrian economics and, most recently, of the Mises Institute’s new documentary, Playing with Fire, say that anyone who discusses the former is not up-to-date on modern banking practices.Mike Shedlock at Mishtalk attempted to refute statements made by Joseph Salerno and me about fractional...

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The Present Monetary System Is Heading for a Breakdown

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...

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Home Ownership Is Not the American Dream

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...

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Centralizing Federal Power through Southern Reconstruction

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...

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