Mises Search

Mark J. Perry alerts us to a great quote from P.J. O’Rourke:   “The free market is not an ideology or a creed or something we’re supposed to take on faith, it’s a measurement. It’s a bathroom scale. I may hate what I see when I step on the bathroom scale, but I can’t pass a law saying I weigh 160 pounds. Authoritarian governments think they can

For a Forbes symposium on job creation, I’ve proposed that we Scrap the Minimum Wage . In a supplementary post for the Forbes Booked Blog, I discuss my sources and some of the research on the labor market effects of the minimum wage. I discussed the difference between allowing markets to work and trying to fix market prices through government fiat

Here’s Suffolk University economist Benjamin Powell on farm subsidies and their effect on poor countries (like recently-decimated-by-flooding Pakistan. A question: is low volatility in food prices explained by protectionism and subsidies, or is it explained by prosperity? My hypothesis is that the US and Europe have stable food supplies and low

I tell my students that economics helps define the non-negotiable constraints on social reality. The principles that people respond to incentives and that people generally do more of things that they think will make them better off also help to clarify what is and isn’t (or what can and what can’t be) true. Today’s XKCD comic offers one of the

One of the more depressing implications of careful economic analysis is that it is very difficult to actually give away money in ways that actually benefit the people toward whom we are trying to be charitable. The law of supply is pretty robust here: if we effectively pay people to do something (stand in line for a handout), we will get more of

My paper “ The Southern Economy ” is finally available. Here’s the abstract: “This essay surveys some of the key themes in Southern economic history and traces the development of the region through the colonial and revolutionary eras, the antebellum period, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the post-bellum period, and the modern period. In

I am convinced by the wisdom of Don Boudreaux . I posted this in the comments at Cafe Hayek: You make a good point. For this reason, I have decided to stop reading Cafe Hayek, Carpe Diem, Marginal Revolution, and any blog that isn’t produced by a member of my household. Your intellectual imperialism is coming to an end, gentlemen; your blog has

The recent takeover of Anheuser-Busch by the Belgian company InBev has raised the usual set of fears about the alleged takeover of the American economy by foreigners. Perhaps it is because Anheuser-Busch produces iconic American brands, but the public reaction to the takeover exhibits the voter biases identified by Bryan Caplan in his 2007 book

In a July 21, 2008 column in the Jewish World Review with a shouting headline of STOP OIL SPECULATION NOW!, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann argued that the government should take action to restrict trading in futures markets. They are mistaken, however, in their assessment of oil speculation. Speculation is an important part of the supply and demand

[From a talk given to a Memphis-area discussion group on Tuesday, October 14, 2008.]   Here we are in the midst of a Great Financial Crisis, with some likening it to the Great Depression and with many more claiming that something must be done. Specifically, people are clamoring for government to fix this latest, greatest crisis of capitalism.