Mises Search

As an apparently war-minded people, Americans (or at least, our American political leaders) have been comfortable framing parts of the domestic policy agenda as wars for decades. Two of the most prominent have been the War on Poverty and the War on Drugs. Despite the similarity in their names, there is an important difference between the two. The

The lesson I draw from the Republican victories in the 2014 election is that people want less government. Since 2009 the number of Democratic Senators fell from 58 to 45, the number of democratic House members fell from 256 to 192, and the number of Democratic governors fell from 28 to 18. I’m not the first to observe that these big Democratic

Elizabeth Warren, recently appointed to a Democratic leadership position in the Senate, explained her priorities: “Wall Street ... is doing very well, CEOs are bringing in millions more and families all across the country are struggling,” she said . “We have to make this government work for the American people. And that’s what I will fight for.”

The process was never intended to be democratic. The first presidents were appointed by elites, not elected by the masses. Not until 1820s, with the rise of Andrew Jackson, did popular voting have a role in the selection of presidents. The modern principle of democracy--repeated in nearly every media account of the Florida vote confusion--holds

Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, is a year old now. On September 19, 2008, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced the need for a $700 billion program to purchase toxic assets held by banks to prevent a financial meltdown, and after some modification Congress rapidly approved TARP on October 3.

Popular opinion seems to be that falling prices–or even stable prices–are bad for the economy, but I’ve never seen any good arguments about why.  I probably don’t need to convince followers of the Austrian school that prices work best when they reflect the underlying values of the things that are priced, but I’ve just read another article about

People tend to think about big government in terms of taxes and government spending. Big governments are the ones that have high taxes and big expenditure programs. Government regulations are a major component of big government, and the regulatory state often leads to more oppressive and more corrupt government than big spending. Consider, for

Readers who want to get a flavor for the ideas of Friedrich Hayek will find an excellent introduction in Donald Boudreaux’s The Essential Hayek . The book can be downloaded free by clicking here . Each chapter begins with a quotation from Hayek, but the book’s chapters explain Hayek’s ideas in Boudreaux’s words. Those ideas come from various works

Last week Ryan McMaken commented on Chinese billionaire Jack Ma’s prediction that our grandchildren’s work day would shrink to four hours. I agree with Ryan’s assessment of Ma’s prediction, supported with the facts about how many fewer hours the average work day is today compared with the past. But looking at averages can be deceiving. The work

After the Fed’s November meeting, when the Fed decided not to hike interest rates, the stock market fell, indicating the disappointment of market participants.  Because lower interest rates tend to raise asset prices, the market decline was an indication of disapproval from market participants. At the Fed’s December 16th meeting, in keeping with