With the venerable Dr. Thomas Sowell turning ninety this week, a question arises in the fintwit (financial Twitter) world: Who is the greatest living economist? This question is more difficult than it appears. First, determining the “greatest” individual in any human field is always a highly subjective endeavor, whether we’re talking about
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. The Mises Institute was born of the “build your own platform” ethos. In the early 1980s few outlets existed for anyone interested in the Austrian school of economics or robust libertarian scholarship. Few universities taught Hayek, much less Mises or Rothbard. Libraries and bookstores
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. Paraphrasing the late Murray Rothbard, the “two party” system in America during the twentieth century worked something like this: Democrats engineered the Great Leaps Forward, and Republicans consolidated the gains. Wilson, Roosevelt, and Johnson were the transformative presidents;
When Money Dies , Adam Fergusson’s cautionary account of hyperinflation in Weimar-era Germany, is the book Americans desperately need to read today. Ours is a nation willfully lacking in knowledge and understanding of money; a cynic might think this lack of apprehension is by design. Money is seldom discussed in schools, popular media, or
When Dr. Ron Paul suffered a health scare during his live Liberty Report show last Friday, I was perhaps less worried than most. His remarkable vitality, vigor, and energy are well known to those around him, along with his penchant for exercise, clean living, and light eating. Having known him thirty years, I simply had no recollection of him
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. Today’s headlines announced Donald and Melania Trump “tested positive” for covid-19. Another claims nineteen thousand Amazon workers “got” covid-19 on the job. Both of these pseudostories are sure to ignite another absurd media frenzy. As always, the story keeps changing: Remember
The Mises Institute continues to hold live, in-person events this year. We did cancel our March research conference, because so many faculty presenters were forbidden to travel by their respective universities. Since then, however, we have held our summer Mises University in Auburn with a great group of kids, events in Birmingham and Orlando, and
Judy Shelton, a Trump nominee to the Fed Board of Governors, may not have coined the excellent term “Fed bug,” but she used it to delicious effect in this 2019 Financial Times interview : “People call me a goldbug, and I think, well, what does that make them? A Fed bug,” she says. Can anyone the New York Times attacks this dishonestly be all
Modern monetary theory , with origins both in chartalism and the “functional finance” doctrine of the 1940s, is the freshest left-progressive gambit to justify radically increased federal spending. It is functional finance, promoted by post-Keynesian economist Abba Lerner, to which Mises refers in this 1950s passage from the new edition of The
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. Can Donald Trump, against all odds, still win in November? It would be a remarkable political feat, on par with his stunning upset in 2016. A global pandemic (however statistically dubious) ravages the country, while riots ravage major US cities. The US economy produces a third less than
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.
