Category Archive: 6b) Austrian Economics

In the market economy, wealth generators do not produce everything for their own consumption. Part of their production is used in exchange for the produce of other producers. Hence, in the market economy, production precedes consumption. This means that something is exchanged for something else. This also means that an increase in the production of goods and services sets in motion an increase in the demand for goods and services. According to...

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Saturday the world was rocked by the outbreak of war in southern Israel as Hamas fighters crossed out of Gaza, taking hostages and killing Israeli civilians. The political leader of Hamas says the attacks were in response to the Israeli treatment of Palestinians at the al-Aqsa Mosque last week. But other reports indicate that the attack was planned for weeks with the help of the Iranian government and was meant to mark the fiftieth anniversary of...

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[In recent months, Senior Fellow Mark Thornton has been covering today's economy in detail in his Minor Issues podcast, so we asked him some questions about where the economy is headed now.] Mises Institute: You’ve become notable for the idea of the “skyscraper curse,” which is an illustration of how an inflationary economy can lead to more and more gargantuan construction projects. The projects keep getting bigger (and taller) until the bust...

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Whether you’re a conservative or libertarian, the notion of government shutdowns is no longer an alien concept considering that Washington managed to add a whopping $1 trillion to the gross national debt in a matter of three months—a large percentage coming from interest expenses alone. Another record for our national debt has been broken again, with $275 billion added onto the national debt in a single day. How we solve this issue is a question...

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I recently wrote about how the Federal Reserve has made the economy of the United States much worse than it would have been without their bureaucratic central planning over the past century. While the Fed’s disastrous track record is widely acknowledged even by Fed apologists, they point out that life was not perfect before the Fed either. They correctly note that there were business cycles before the creation of the Fed. So, even though inflation...

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The ongoing conflict between the state of Israel and Hamas escalated considerably on Saturday. A group of armed fighters—presumably of Hamas—broke through the Gaza-Israel border barrier and launched what is sure to be a short-lived invasion of southwestern Israel.  At least 700 Israeli citizens—most of them apparently civilians—were killed, and more than one hundred were taken hostage. The Israeli state quickly retaliated with widespread bombing of...

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Aside from stealing your life savings and launching depressions, one of the nastier features of paper money is what it does to governments. In short, paper money transforms governments from parasites to predators. Once a government can print what it likes, it no longer needs taxes. Meaning it no longer needs us. We saw this in living color during the covid lockdowns. Just imagine a world without a central bank where, in the first days of the...

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There are hundreds of headlines all over the news warning of the negative impact of a government shutdown. The negative impact on GDP, according to Bloomberg, is estimated at 0.5% of the quarterly annualized rate if the shutdown lasts for two weeks. Obviously, that is an annualized rate, not the overall hit. The last government shutdown lasted between December 22nd, 2018, and January 20th, 2019, and the United States economy still grew at a 2.2...

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Out of Pennsylvania’s twenty-five hundred municipalities, about half (1,279) have no police department as of 2013. Since 2013, twenty more municipalities have disbanded their police departments, opting for police coverage by the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP). On top of that, 420 municipalities only provide part-time coverage (no 24/7 coverage), requiring the PSP to “pick up the slack” so to speak. This may seem shocking, but this is the...

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