At the New York Times, you can watch a slide show called “ Realities of Labor “ written by Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof. Some of the images are heart-rending, but the message is ambiguous: one is left to wonder whether or not the Times is for or against free trade. The presentation begins with images of Howard Dean and the democratic
New models of “urban planning” are all the rage: the young, hip, creative workforce is attracted by art lofts, local music, entertainment districts, urban recreation...and we see it all in “downtown revitalization” programs aimed not at cutting taxes or providing safe neighborhoods but at providing the various amusements and shiny objects that the
On another Times editorial : Fact 1: some people lose from globalization in the short run (high-wage Americans who are temporarily unemployed). Fact 2: lots of people gain from globalization in the short run (masses of people in poverty-stricken countries who no longer have to scratch the ground for subsistence and can instead earn decent money
“The Medicare hospital trust fund will be insolvent by 2019 , seven years earlier than previously forecast, if it continues on its current path, government-appointed trustees warned in their annual report Tuesday” And Social Security will be broke by
My first contribution to my weekly Forbes column/blog “The Economic Imagination” (which was going to be “Guerrilla Economics,” but it turns out that’s copyrighted) is up . There will probably be a couple of hiccups with Forbes’ new publishing platform and the first post might change accordingly, but I’m pretty excited about it. Please join the
My new Forbes article asks “ If We Win the Future, Who Loses? ” While we’re talking about it, here are a few other comments that correct some popular misconceptions: Misconception 1: The rich get richer while the poor get poorer, and the wealth of the wealthy is caused by the poverty of the poor . In today’s Philadelphia Inquirer , Steven
I’m speaking to a Mid-South Model UN Group in about an hour about human rights and the Millennium Development Goals. I’m planning to record the talk, and it should be online eventually. Since human rights include the right to trade without interference, I’m going to focus on a couple of issues: free trade and immigration. Here is a handful of
Here are some basic principles of bizarro economics in the 21st century: 1. Actual human beings do not matter. Spaces bounded by latitude, longitude, and natural barriers do. 2. Actual human beings do not matter. Political abstractions like nation-states do. 3. The country with the biggest GDP wins. 4. Societies exist so they can fight wars. 5.
If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen Greg Ransom’s posts below discussing what Tom Woods and Yuri Maltsev’s appearance on Glenn Beck did for Hayek exposure (watch the whole thing here ). I’m optimistic about the world we’re building for our children. The Road to Sefdom became the hottest seller on Amazon.com after Tom and Yuri appeared
The US health care system is a complete mess, our % of GDP spending on health care isn’t that surprising given that health care is a super-normal good–meaning roughly that our consumption of health care rises more rapidly than our incomes–and the US is extremely wealthy, and yet it works decently well on some margins. Nationalizing health care,
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.
