Category Archive: 6b) Austrian Economics

Rulers found out early on that they could debase gold and silver coins for their own gain. As a consequence, the money supply increased, whereas money’s purchasing power fell. This pseudoalchemy is the true definition of inflation and has been a policy for more than a thousand years. What’s more, an increase in the money supply leads to rising prices. This symptom of inflation is often mistaken as inflation itself. The correct term, though, is...

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Back in 2002, then-Vice President Dick Cheney claimed "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" and went on to push for tax cuts combined with more federal spending. Indeed, the Bush administration would go on to push immense amounts of new spending, supporting a huge Medicare expansion and blowing hundreds of millions of dollars on costly and pointless occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The national debt grew by 70 percent during Bush's...

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Once again, the economic system is trying to adjust to political and monetary interventions. The year 2023 marks the end of a historical period characterized by zero-cost credit. The monetary expansion that began in the early 2000s led to the great financial crisis of 2008 and the emerging markets boom. Exaggerated demand expectations and easy access to capital caused an overexpansion of production capacity and the subsequent industrial...

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In September 2023, the Mises Institute will hold the inaugural meeting of the Mises Book Club, its newest program to promote deep reading in Austrian economics.  In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Murray Rothbard's For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, this iconic Austrolibertarian text will be the focus of our inaugural meeting. For eight riveting weeks, ten to fifteen specially selected undergraduate students will partake in rich...

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America and the Art of the Possible: Restoring National Vitality in an Age of Decayby Christopher BuskirkEncounter Books, 2023; xxv + 162 pp. Christopher Buskirk is the publisher and editor of the magazine American Greatness, and the title of that magazine, like that of the book, shows his principal concern. How can the American people regain the sense of optimism and purpose which we once had but have now lost? Buskirk says that in the public...

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During the progressive era, academia hastily adopted the inhumane pseudoscience of eugenics, and its results on the world were devastating. The influence of the Boston Brahmins in New England can explain the fervent adoption of this malignant belief. This elite and well-educated class of white Anglo-Saxon Protestants reeked of pomp and snobbery. The origin of the term “Boston Brahmin” came from Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. in his 1861 novel Elsie...

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