Category Archive: 6b.) Mises.org

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

Why Medicare for All Would Require Huge Tax Increases

2020-03-13

by

2020-03-13

Medicare for All is listed as the top priority of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. He describes it as a single-payer system that is “free at the point of service” as there will be no premiums, deductibles, copays, or surprise bills. It will cover more services (dental, hearing, vision, long-term care, substance abuse treatment, etc.) than what the present Medicare system covers. It will also stop the “pharmaceutical industry from...

Read More »

The “Market Monetarists” and NGDP Targeting

2020-03-12

by

2020-03-12

[This article is part of the Understanding Money Mechanics series, by Robert P. Murphy. The series will be published as a book in late 2020.] In addition to the Keynesian perspective (covered in chapter 14), a relatively new challenge to the Austrian framework comes from the “market monetarists” and their endorsement of a central bank policy of “level targeting” of nominal gross domestic product (sometimes abbreviated as NGDPLT1).

Read More »

If China Is the Problem, Can’t We At Least Have Free Trade with Everyone Else?

2020-03-11

by

2020-03-11

It remains unclear how much the stock market implosion of recent days will affect the larger economy. As David Stockman has noted often, the Wall Street economy is not synonymous with the Main Street economy, contrary to what the advocates of rampant bank bailouts and financialization would have us believe.

Read More »

Why Sweden’s Negative Interest Rate Experiment Is a Failure

2020-03-10

by

2020-03-10

According to the Financial Times's February 20 article “Why Sweden Ditched Its Negative Rate Experiment,” economists are pondering whether Sweden’s central bank experiment with negative interest rate was a success. Sweden’s Riksbank, the world’s oldest central bank, introduced negative interest rates in early 2015.

Read More »

What Comes After Quantitative Easing?

2020-03-09

by

2020-03-09

André de Godoy: Ludwig von Mises mentions in his books that credit expansion is one of the causes of the inflation beyond the monetary expansion. What are the similarities and differences between those two phenomena?

Read More »

Episode 387: Ryan McMaken and Donnie Gebert Talk Radical Decentralization and Secession

2020-03-09

by

62 Minutes Some Strong Language Pete invited Mises.org editor Ryan McMaken and author Donnie Gebert to come on the show and compare notes on the subject of decentralization and secession. Donnie wrote the book “A Direct Republic – The Null Hypothesis of Politics,” and Ryan has written many articles lately on getting States smaller. Ryan …

Read More »

What Would Murray Say About the Coronavirus?

2020-03-08

by

2020-03-08

Murray Rothbard died in January 1995, long before this year’s coronavirus scare. But the principles this great thinker taught us can help us answer questions about the coronavirus outbreak which trouble many of us. Would the US government be justified in imposing massive involuntary quarantines in order to slow down the spread of disease? What about vaccines?

Read More »

Per Bylund on How Regulations Affect Our Everyday Lives (The Seen, the Unseen, and the Unrealized)

2020-03-07

by

The Nassau Institute & Templeton Religion Trust In Collaboration with the Banking Economics & Finance Department & The Economics Society of The University of The Bahamas presents: Professor Per Bylund on The Seen, the Unseen, and the Unrealized: How Regulations Affect Our Everyday Lives On February 6, 2020 at 6:30pm at Choices Restaurant, University of …

Read More »

The US Constitution Needs an Expiration Date

2020-03-07

by

2020-03-07

A unique feature of the Swiss Federal Constitution is the fact that the central government's power to impose direct taxes on citizens expires every decade or so. In fact, the current taxing authority expires at the end of 2020. Fortunately for the Swiss republic's central government, voters approved an extension (the "New Financial Regime 2021") for another fifteen years in a March 2018 election.

Read More »

Mit Geld zur Weltherrschaft | Gast: Thorsten Polleit | Ep. 29

2020-03-06

by

Im Gespräch mit Thorsten Polleit über sein aktuelles Buch „Mit Geld zur Weltherrschaft: Warum unser Geld uns in einen dystopischen Weltstaat führt – und wie wir mit besserem Geld eine bessere Welt schaffen können“ und über die Entstehung sowie Aktivitäten des Ludwig von Mises Institut Deutschland. Nachfolgend die in der Ausgabe angesprochenen Website-Links: Buch: „Mit …

Read More »

“Heritage” Designation of Old Buildings Is Both Wasteful and Arbitrary

2020-03-06

by

2020-03-06

An old red barn in London, Ontario was recently given heritage protection by City Council. Two days later, after dark, the barn was demolished. Owner John McLeod, citing legal advice, wouldn’t comment when asked if he’d demolished the barn but said, “I’m delighted that it’s down.”

Read More »

Governments Are Using the Coronavirus to Distract From Their Own Failures

2020-03-05

by

2020-03-05

The Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Global Cases Monitor shows that the mortality rate of the epidemic is very low. At the writing of this article,1 there have been 92,818 cases, 3,195 deaths, and 48,201 recoveries. It is normal for the media to focus on the first two figures, but I think that it is important to remember the last one. The recovered figure is more than ten times the deceased one.

Read More »

Christine Lagarde’s New Vision for the ECB

2020-03-05

by

2020-03-05

On December 12, Christine Lagarde introduced her goals and vision in her first rate-setting meeting as the new president of the European Central Bank (ECB). On the actual policy front, there were no surprises. She remained committed to the path set by her predecessor, Mario Draghi, and kept the current monetary stimulus unchanged.

Read More »

The Truth About Taxes | by Murray N. Rothbard

2020-03-04

by

Orthodox neoclassical economics has long maintained that, from the point of view of the taxed themselves, an income tax is “better than” an excise tax on a particular form of consumption, since, in addition to the total revenue extracted, which is assumed to be the same in both cases, the excise tax weights the levy …

Read More »

The Fed Slashes Rates as Powell Declares Economy “Strong”

2020-03-04

by

2020-03-04

Federal Funds Target Rate Since 1992
The Federal Reserve this morning slashed the target federal funds rate by 0.5 percent today. According to CNBC: The Federal Reserve moved to an enact an emergency interest rate cut after officials saw the coronavirus having a material impact on the economic outlook, Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday.

Read More »

Repudiating the National Debt | by Murray N. Rothbard

2020-03-03

by

Before the Reagan era, conservatives were clear about how they felt about deficits and the public debt: a balanced budget was good, and deficits and the public debt were bad, piled up by free-spending Keynesians and socialists, who absurdly proclaimed that there was nothing wrong or onerous about the public debt. Since Reagan, however, intellectual-political …

Read More »

The Health Plan’s Devilish Principles | by Murray N. Rothbard

2020-03-03

by

The standard media cliché about the Clinton health plan is that God, or the Devil, depending on your point of view, “is in the details.” There is surprising agreement among both the supporters and all too many of the critics of the Clinton health “reform.” The supporters say that the general principles of the plan …

Read More »

Mises: To Adopt Keynesian Terminology Is to Legitimize It

2020-03-02

by

2020-03-02

Some years ago, there was published a book in the German language with the title L.T.I. These three letters stood for three Latin words, lingua Tertii Imperii, the language of the Third Reich. And the author, a former professor of Romance languages at one of the German universities, described in this book his adventures during the Nazi regime.

Read More »

The US’s “Free Trade” Isn’t Very Free

2020-03-01

by

2020-03-01

Taxes on US imports as a share of total imports value
The false notion that the US has eliminated virtually all of its barriers to foreign imports has been repeated more and more in recent years. The claim is made both by advocates for free trade and by critics of free trade. For instance, Patrick Buchanan has claimed only American elites "are beneficiaries to free trade" while implying the US either has free trade, or something close to it.

Read More »

Vermögen schützen: So wird Gold zur echten Krisenwährung

2020-02-28

by

Gold gilt als die klassische Krisenwährung. Das Edelmetall soll das Vermögen schützen, wenn die ungedeckten Papierwährungen zusammenbrechen. Doch Gold allein wird in der Krise nicht helfen. Thorsten Polleit, Chefvolkswirt bei Degussa, rät Anlegern, für den Krisenfall auch Silber vorzuhalten. Er glaubt nicht, dass Gold im Krisenfall tatsächlich im Tagesgeschäft zum Bezahlen verwendet wird. Dafür eigne …

Read More »