USA Today offers an outstanding analysis of why an “ Aging Population Makes this Deficit Scarier “ than the one in the 1980s: “When deficits started taking off 20 years ago, the retirement of the baby boom generation was just a distant worry. Now, as the nation faces years of red ink, including at least a $400 billion shortfall in 2003 alone, the
Courtesy of LRC : “ The Price of Freedom “ (Slate): “Americans are not so innately freedom-loving that we would never let it dribble away without noticing. I can prove this because it actually happened, within the adult lifetimes of anyone over about 50. On August 15, 1971, more or less out of the blue, President Nixon declared a freeze on wages
The WSJ runs a good attack on the “ Medicare Drug Folly ,” which the editorial blasts: “We’re all for a prosperous old age, but it is hardly a step toward social justice for comfortable retirees to be further subsidized by working taxpayers with mortgages and kids...” But one name is missing: George W. Bush, who is the primary backer of the $400
The business headlines are dominated by today’s “stampede,” of course, so it is interesting to look back at Frank Shostak’s article from last week ( Has a New Bull Market Begun ?): “Since January of this year the growth momentum of adjusted money AMS [ Austrian Money Supply ] shows a visible rebound. The yearly rate of growth jumped from 1% in
How much of society’s security from rights violations, and justice for those who are caught, do we owe to the government’s police and courts? The usual answer is: most or all of it. Andrea Elliot in the New York Times , however, documents the workings of a completely private system we all take for granted: the routine policing of department
Consumer Prices Flat in May, say the headlines. But the BLS press release tells a more complicated story: “During the first five months of 2003, the CPI-U rose at a 2.3 percent seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR).This compares with an increase of 2.4 percent for all of 2002. The index for energy, which rose 10.7 percent in 2002, advanced at a
Hisashi Kitahara of the Daily Yomiuri says: “There are growing voices in Japan calling for the government to print money as a trump card to end deflation. The man who touched off the arguments was Prof. Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, the recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. The biggest problem Japan is saddled
Lew Rockwell on the Medicare reform that magically makes high prices for prescription drugs disappear. See How Socialism Happens Here : “Those who credit government programs with [expanded life expectancy] progress are partially correct: government has subsidized the prolongation of life at the expense of other social needs, simply by taxing the
Honda Tells U.S. Auto Makers to Try Harder (Reuters): U.S. auto makers will have to pull up their socks in the face of increasing inroads by Japanese competitors into the U.S. market, Honda Motor Co President Hiroyuki Yoshino said on Wednesday.”They should try harder,” Yoshino told reporters when asked about the Japanese auto makers’ steady
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.
