Mises Daily

It took centuries to end the idea that taxes kept the privileged class in comfort and financed their wars. But now we're told taxes = civilization.

It is the business of legal violence to defend persons and their property from violent attack, from molestation or appropriation of their property without their consent.

How was the Keynesian Revolution accomplished? The old fallacies were dressed up by Keynes in such a wilderness of pretentious jargon, that the Keynesian disciples claimed to be the only ones able to understand the Master.

The concept of capital is the fundamental concept of economic calculation, the foremost mental tool of the conduct of affairs in the market economy. Its correlative is the concept of income.

Utilitarian economists, grounded on no ethical theory of property rights, can only fall back on defending whatever status quo may happen to exist.

Spanish mercantilism meant the Crown picked which industries flourished and which withered. This led to a multitude of malinvestments including booms for southern Spain and busts in the Low Countries.  

The average standard of living in this country is higher than in any other country of the world. This is because the per head quota of capital invested is in America higher than in other countries.

According to this theory, cooperation among any number of persons is more productive than the individual efforts of the same persons in isolation from one another.

History is only a tiresome repetition of one story. Persons and classes have sought to win possession of the power of the state in order to live luxuriously out of the earnings of others.

His emphasis on property, capital, entrepreneurship, and above all, his commitment to human action and not government action, makes his long-forgotten work on economics worthy of a revival.