The Red Robin chain of 570 restaurants has decided to eliminate busboys due to rising labor costs. Its business is mostly in western states several of which have raised the local minimum wage rate. Previously they eliminated the job of “expediter” who prepared plates in the kitchen due to rising labor costs. Clearly the labor force is losing jobs
Harvard has been a leader in the economics profession for better or worse. In recent years the economics department has been viewed as relatively free market oriented where human action is seen as rational, research is guided by economic theory, and where markets work most of the time. Symbolically, the introductory undergraduate course was taught
As many of you know, I have been researching and writing about the economics of Irish economist and banker Richard Cantillon for over 20 years. He was the first to write a book about economic theory, circa 1730, coined the modern term entrepreneur, and the first to provide a supply and demand analysis of prices, as well as the basics of Austrian
From the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 21, no. 2 (Summer 2018). In a core chapter in their book, Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality since 1700 (Princeton University Press, 2016), Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson present “The Greatest Leveling of All Time,” circa 1910 to 1970. In this chapter, the two prominent
The end of alcohol prohibition in 1933 and the subsequent War on Drugs might just be what spreads a widespread revival of libertarianism and Austrian Economics. On January 17, 1920, America embarked on an official policy of prohibiting alcohol nationwide backed by the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act. The idea had been
[ Money, Inflation, and Business Cycles: The Cantillon Effect and the Economy , by Arkadiusz Sieroń. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. x + 162 pp.] Abstract: Austrian economists hold that money matters a great deal in concrete terms in the immediate short run and has permanent long-run effects. Sieroń’s book investigates the Cantillon effect, which
Former Mises Fellow Peter St. Onge, senior economist at the Montreal Economic Institute cowrote an op-ed in the Globe and Mail (Toronto) that highlights the increasing importance of part-time workers and the benefits they provide customers over traditional lines of work. Casual or “gig” work has been around a very long time, but the sharing
Beltway libertarian economists are today hailing the Fed’s efforts to cure the economic crisis or are even suggesting they intervene to a greater extent to quell fears in markets. That is like saying we need to spread the coronavirus to more people to stop the pandemic. The Fed created the economic crisis with its more than a decade–long campaign
We are repeatedly told that the unprecedented monetary stimulus by the Federal Reserve and other central banks is necessary to stimulate the economy, create jobs, and generate economic growth. The truth is that this scheme is designed to stealthily steal from the productive classes in order to enrich the unproductive financial class and the
[Excerpt from “ The Fall and Rise of Puritanical Policy in America ,” Journal of Libertarian Studies 12, no. 1 (1996): 143–60] America was colonized by Europeans seeking economic and religious liberty, with many of the colonies founded explicitly along theocratic lines. The most notorious of these groups, the Puritans, founded the Massachusetts
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.
