Category Archive: 6b) Austrian Economics

In 1903, a lawyer in Germany took out an insurance policy and made payments on it faithfully. When the policy came due in twenty years, he cashed it in and bought a single loaf of bread with the proceeds. He was fortunate. If he had waited a few days longer, the money he received would have bought no more than a few crumbs. Germany had been on the usual fractional reserve gold standard prior to World War I, with the Reichsbank—its central...

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Official inflation statistics are biased. Substitution effects and quality changes are problems that cannot be resolved objectively, even with the most sophisticated statistical methods. It may be that the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) overestimates inflation. There are also good arguments for a downward bias. It may also be that the errors in measuring consumer price inflation are negligible. However, even if official statistics show...

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Affordable living is the topic of the day. Not only in the world of Mises.org but in everyday life. While inflation has fallen to some degree, it remains high and understated. While many people dislike inflation and know intuitively it is robbing them of their wealth, I would like to point out a few ways in which this is happening more than they realize. One of the better-known reasons for the understatement of inflation is the definitional changes...

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Welfare states in Scandinavia are revered by the American Left. Many think that America could reduce social problems by copying their policies. To such people, the success of the Scandinavian states is evidence that socialism works. Confidence in the welfare policies of these places is so great that pundits even attribute the prosperity of Scandinavia to these policies. Few ponder why socialism leads to disastrous consequences elsewhere but...

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Murray Rothbard is well-known as one of the greatest exponents of praxeology, which operates through a priori reasoning. He was careful, however, to distinguish praxeology from history. The latter could be studied only through empirical investigation. In this week’s column, I’d like to discuss some observations he makes about this in For a New Liberty, which was published fifty years ago. In the section called “Avoiding a Priori History,” Rothbard...

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The word “chaos” has been the buzzword this week in Washington, largely directed toward Rep. Matt Gaetz’s successful coup against former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and the resulting void in Republican leadership. In an era where most outcomes in Washington are predictable, best illustrated by yet another kick-the-can-down-the-road continuing resolution on spending passed the preceding weekend, the first successful use of a motion to vacate...

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Argentinian presidential candidate Javier Milei—who could actually win in the general election later this month—has become famous for his fiery speeches and his libertarian views from central banking to government spending. Milei's proposed policies—if he's able to actually implement them—would do much to help the Argentinian economy recover from decades of malaise caused by runaway government spending and monetary inflation. Among Milei's...

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Historically, inflation always referred to an increase in the money supply, whereas nowadays it refers to an increase in prices. This shift in the definition of inflation lets central banks get away with their fraudulent business. Thus, the original definition must be reestablished. We must, by all means, switch the focus from the symptoms to the disease. The CPI Deserves Less Attention The lure of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) doesn’t just...

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Public goods, in mainstream economic theory, are goods that are nonrivalrous, where one person using a good does not preclude anyone else’s capacity to do the same, and nonexcludable, where owners of the public goods are generally unable to restrict anyone’s access to the good. Commonly touted examples include public lighting, like streetlights, radio, firework shows, military defenses, and flood defenses. To the mainstream, public goods present an...

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