Another web gizmo, this one counting the national debt, from Meissl Economic Web Development . Trouble is that someone needs to speed it up, because it is off by about $500 billion, at least according to the Treasury Department . The correct figure as of August 28, 2003 is $6,791,411,645,291.54
It was the New York Times that came up with the idea: a news alert in your inbox based on a key word of your own choosing (though there were always limits). The service became so popular that the Times started charging for the service. Leave it to Google: it has perfected the idea with its BETA test of Google News Alerts . There are no limits to
New York Times reporter Keith Bradsher may know something about Austrian business cycle theory, talked to someone who does (perhaps Dong Tao at Credit Suisse First Boston?), or maybe he is just a good observer: China’s central bank expresses growing alarm that reckless bank lending, reminiscent of the pattern that preceded the American savings and
It should be no surprise when a government policy generates the opposite results of its stated aims. For example, a war on terrorism might itself breed terrorism and thus ever more excuses for the war. A new ABC News poll says: “Americans express a growing suspicion that the war in Iraq will boost rather than ease the long-term risk of terrorism
Paul C. Light of Brookings is getting attention for his new paper showing that Bush has vastly expanded government employment. The Reuters story says : “The growth represents a roughly 75 percent rebound from federal work force declines linked to the post-Cold War ‘peace dividend,’ which helped enable former President Bill Clinton to declare in
Jagdish Bhagwhati of Columbia University, one of the top free-trade economists in the world, was always a skeptic of the merit of the World Trade Organization, but he appears to have completely firmed up on the question, now calling the entire apparatus a “sham” that is working to regulate the third world, “the ultimate objective being the
New poll data from Zogby Bush Job Performance Positive % Negative % September 2003 45 54 August 2003 52 48 July 2003 53 46 March 2003 54 45 September 2002 64 36 September 2001 82 17 August 2001 50 49 January 2001 42 36
The Economist naively asks : “Why on earth can’t the world’s richest country ensure that Baghdad has water and electricity?” Time to re-read Mises’s 1920 essay: “ Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth “ It is a general complaint that the administration of public undertakings lacks initiative. It is believed that this might be remedied
There is an enormous literature on the “living standards” question, and most of it comes down to a debate over method. If our living standards are measured by consumption, the question of whether the current generation is better off than any previous one is easy to settle (Cox and Alm take this approach in “Myths of Rich and Poor”). But matters
In international economic affairs, pro-market analysts have usually thought of developing-world influence in a negative light (demanding more aid, bailouts, and the like). But the events in Cancun have turned the tables , for it is the developing world that is calling for free trade and the industrialized nations that are demanding the special
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.
