The Free Market 14, no. 3 (March 1996) During the “shutdown” of the federal government, bureaucrats were divided between “essential” and “non-essential.” The designation caused enormous turmoil within agencies. People with lifetime jobs and gigantic pensions were deemed nonessential, while those holding short-term, highly paid, political
The Free Market 14, no. 4 (April 1996) There it is, on the cover of Newsweek , in thick, blood-red letters: “Corporate Killers.” What follows is mug-like photo after photo, some of them grainy, of rich white men, all menacing and “greedy.” They are the CEOs of America’s top corporations. The story’s thesis is simple: they are destroying the
The Free Market 14, no. 5 (May 1996) It was November 25, 1945, and the overpaid workers at General Motors were striking, again. Their gripe? Company profits were up, but wages were not. They demanded a shorter workweek and higher pay. Then as now, this government-backed union was using its legal privileges to stick it to consumers and employers.
The Free Market 14, no. 10 (October 1996) One peculiar aspect of the 1993–95 trade debate was the contradictory purposes—or so it seemed—of Nafta and Gatt. They embrace different theories of how the U.S. should conduct trade policy. The “bilateralistists” think that the U.S. should negotiate trade with one country at a time. The
The Free Market 15, no. 2 (February 1997) The fame of the Austrian School in the 1920s and 1930s rests on its fierce resistance to the main intellectual currents of the time: welfarism, collectivism, and central planning. The Austrian economists battled these trends, made the case for the genuinely free society—necessarily based on private
The Free Market 15, no. 3 (March 1997) Congress proved it: not even childbirth is off limits to federal mandates. Forty-eight hours will heretofore be the minimum hospital stay for new mothers, Congress said, double the time insurance companies used to cover. Who could disagree with such tender loving care, courtesy of D.C.? There’s a cost even
The Free Market 15, no. 4 (April 1997) The Washington Times asked the new UN head why he thinks the agency has a PR problem in the United States. “It is a leftover from the late seventies and eighties,” he said, “when there was a lot of talking about getting government off the back of people.” Right, but it’s more of a living reality than a
The Free Market 15, no. 5 (May/June 1997) On the presidential campaign trail, Bob Dole spoke often about his own private charity, the Dole Foundation. He used it to showcase his personal compassion for those in need, particularly people with disabilities. In televised debates, he conjured up images of himself and his wife digging into their
The Free Market 15, no. 9 (September 1997) The 50th anniversary of the Marshall Plan provided another occasion for the media to celebrate the government’s good works. The U.S.’s headlong plunge into global welfarism (nearly $100 billion in current dollars), they said, saved European economies after the Second World War. One reporter, Garrick
The Free Market 15, no. 12 (December 1997) After hundreds of years of attacks on Christmas, economists have finally gotten into the act. Yale University’s Joel Waldfogel, writing in the American Economic Review , condemns what he calls “The Deadweight Loss of Christmas.” Once you cut through the calculus and graphs, his conclusion is clear:
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.
