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Watching the Capitol Hill hearings on what went wrong after Hurricane Katrina provided a glimpse of what it must have been like in the Politburo in the 1950s. The Soviet bureaucrats would gather with the party officials and factory managers to figure out why grain production was down or why shop shelves were empty or why the bread lines were ever

H. Lee Scott, Jr., the CEO of Wal-Mart, surprised many by calling for an increase in the minimum wage. And what accolades were heaped on him! The company was even cast in a new role, from the exploiter of workers to the responsible advocate of pro-worker policies. And how selfless, for who has to pay such higher wages but companies like Wal-Mart?

We flatter ourselves, in this technological age driven by financial innovation and mind-boggling efficiencies, that we know more than any previous generation. But there is lost knowledge, among which is the knowledge of what sound money feels and looks like, what it does, who makes it and why, and how it holds its value. So let us revisit Robert

It has been decades since legislatures have struck out daringly in some new and uncharted territory of social and economic management. For the most part, in the US, Europe, Russia, China, and Latin America, legislatures are constantly at work reforming the systems they created in the past rather than embarking on totally new ventures. And what are

Listen to  the  Audio Mises Wire  version  of this article. Ludwig von Mises didn’t like references to the “miracle” of the marketplace or the “magic” of production or other terms that suggest that economic systems depend on some force that is beyond human comprehension. In his view, we are better off coming to a rational understanding of why

Why do we keep falling for this? Once in every second-term presidency, the chief executive lectures the country about the impending disaster of a shortage of mathematicians and scientists. People think: oh no, we’d better get on the stick and create some in a hurry! Thus does the President want to spend $50 billion over 10 years — a figure these

If you say that government is too big and truly overweening, you elicit a surprising degree of agreement among people, even mainstream columnists, economists, and nearly everyone. Even government employees, who famously resent their bosses, might be quick to agree. If you hang outside the offices of the IRS in Washington, D.C., in the park at

Here is a book review of no particular book but rather a class of books that has been the ruling genre in conservative nonfiction for fifty years. Actually we can include blogs in this too, since thousands upon thousands partake of the same error. This critique applies the nearly every tract written from the Right from Barry Goldwater’s Conscience

Americans can only be mystified by the protests that rocked France and led to a cave in by the government. A small economic reform that would have meant the start of much-need liberalization has been repealed. The change in labor law would have permitted employers to fire workers, age 25 years or younger, in the first two years of employment. On

I talked to people all the time who think that the Mises Institute is all worked up in a frenzy over nothing. After all, we are free to speak our minds, and no one is arrested for expressing opinions not held by those in charge of the government. You can persuasively argue that the US economy is the most prosperous in the history of the world, and