Brazilians were told the way to reducing poverty and curbing social inequality was enlarging the government’s role in the economy through the expansion of public services and public works. And the voters believed it. Social democrats were elected with the hope that they would bring a more prosperous and egalitarian society. But then, things didn’t
In recent decades, increasingly rapid innovation in medicine, education, means of transport, data storage, and communication have contributed to a general improvement in living standards. Still, from time to time this successful narrative is hit hard by noisy worries about the “job-destroying effect of automation” — a notion that remains lodged in
The idea of a “third way” in economic policy has fascinated politicians, scholars, artists, and the voters around the world. Surfing this wave, the welfare state has spread quickly in recent decades. Some even say that Nordic countries are the definitive evidence that it is possible to deliver a prosperous and egalitarian society through state
Jair Bolsonaro is likely to be the most despised politician in Latin America. At least among a certain portion of the population. Some say he is the “ Trump of the tropics” — in a pejorative way, of course. Nonetheless, he was elected president of Brazil. So how could that happen? How could a “homophobic, misogynist and racist ‘thing’” (according
“Successful economies are not jungles, they’re gardens, which is to say that markets, like gardens, must be tended, that the market is the greatest social technology ever invented to solving human problems, but unconstrained by social or democratic regulation, markets inevitably create more problems than they solve.” These are the words of Nick
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.