Mises Search

A core problem with government is that its managers believe that all reality will conform to their wishes if they issue the right orders, pass the right laws, and put the right people in charge. Reality resists this simple-minded approach; witness the debacle of the war on terror. Sadly, the same group that has managed that war is now managing

I admit to liking one aspect of our recessionary environment. It focuses the mind on what really matters, so that we are just a bit less likely to take wealth for granted. This is a tendency of everyone who lives in a booming economy: we tend to think of the wealth that surrounds us as a fixed part of nature, something that is not going away and

Ludwig von Mises had a theory about interventionism: It doesn’t accomplish its stated ends. Instead it distorts the market. That distortion cries out for a fix. The fix can consist in pulling back and freeing the market or taking further steps toward intervention. The State nearly always chooses the latter course, unless forced to do otherwise.

If you are glued to the evening news or the radio, you might believe that the whole nation is waiting in suspense to see how our leaders are going to deal with the economic challenges of our day: recession, inflation, unemployment, bank runs, etc. There are proposed laws, bills flying everywhere, candidates promising this and that, press

Frédéric Bastiat famously observed that the state costs us in ways we can see and ways we cannot see. Economists tend to focus on the second type because they elude public perceptions. What inventions are we denied because of regulations? What might have been done with the resources that are diverted in taxes or higher prices due to protectionism?

Official data are starting to reveal what close observers have suspected for some time. Layoffs are increasing. Unemployment is on the rise. It now stands at a four-year high of 5.7 percent, which is not high by historical standards, but it stings when you consider that the rate dipped below 4 percent in the late 1990s. What worries people is the

The heart of the modern state is the central bank. By heart I mean the very thing that makes it work, and without which the modern state would quickly wither and die. It is the thing that makes the money. As such, it purports to be our stabilizer, our source of employment, the fuel behind the economic growth that brings us technology. In truth, it

Sometimes the bad news is the good news. So it is with the report that retail sales are down by 0.1 percent in July, the sharpest drop in many months. Why good news? It means that consumers are starting to cut back. They could be going into less debt. They might be saving more. They are being more careful about long-term plans pending short-term

George Bush, with the clock ticking down the last months of his presidency, nearly started yet another war that might have escalated in the manner of World War I: a diplomatic failure backed by arms that resulted in a superpower clash. It is a wonder that the world has survived his “war on terror,” which turned out to be a war on American liberty

This speech was delivered at the Rally for the Republic in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on September 2, 2008. You can watch Lew deliver this speech on YouTube . Sometimes people say that Americans are cynical about politics. Looking at the way the Bush administration has used and abused its power for the last eight years, is it really surprising? You