Mises Search

Mention any topic touching on international trade and you are sure to provoke multiple discussions, ranging from child labor to parity in workplace safety, and including catchy terms like “dumping,” “outsourcing,” and “brain drain.”  It seems as if many of our best and brightest scholars are devoting their precious talents to enumerating all of

Recent developments in the global economy—specifically, higher skilled foreign workers, lower costs of capital movement, and improved communications—have apparently undermined “the” case for free trade, one of the most bedrock conclusions of orthodox economics. In previous articles ( 1 and 2 ) I have restated the case in light of the specific

I love to read economist Steven Landsburg, even though I almost always disagree with him. In the present article, I’ll focus on a chapter from Landsburg’s forthcoming book entitled “More Sex Is Safer Sex,” which could pass as a parody of economic analysis worthy of Swift. As I will explain more carefully in a moment, Landsburg argues that the way

I was flipping through my preset radio channels and stopped on NPR to catch the tail end of an analysis of Bush’s inaugural speech. One of the commentators (I wish I knew his name) offered a gem that went something like this: ‘I wish Bush would stop playing the liberty card so much when it comes to Iraq. We’ve got too much liberty in Iraq; we’ve

In a   recent article , I analyzed the ambiguities and contradictions in the typical usage of terms such as liberty and order . In the present piece, I would like to do the same with the word anarchy . As before, I won’t get to spend much time with substantive analysis. Before sober minds can consider these difficult matters, we first need to

Mitchell Anderson’s article, “End of cheap oil is a blessing,” attacks the widespread outrage over the unusually high gas prices of recent months. Anderson mixes three parts economic fallacy with two parts condemnation of government absurdities, and adds a dash of fervent environmentalism. The result is a hilarious (or infuriating, depending on

Now that the Bush Administration has wrapped up its sixty-stop, sixty-day campaign to bolster support for its Social Security proposal, the machinery is cranking in that great deliberative body, the U.S. Congress. The latest development is Bush’s suggestion to index benefits for wealthy retirees to prices (rather than wages), which is effectively

Say what you will about Levitt and Dubner, but they sure know how to sell a book. The co-authors (Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner) of Freakonomics (William Morrow, 2005) apparently sent early copies to influential bloggers, they set up their own promotional blog , they just had an op-ed (based on a book chapter) in USA Today , and—honor of

In a previous article , I argued that Bush’s original proposal to reform Social Security—in which up to one-third of a worker’s (and his employer’s) “contributions” would be channeled into the stock market, but no one’s current benefits would be cut and other taxes would not be raised—would not increase investment or lower interest rates one iota,

Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. The most famous Austrian economist is 1974 Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek. Because of his moderate views excusing state interventions in various circumstances, hardcore Rothbardians tend to regard Hayek as less than pure in many areas. However, one area where Hayek is certainly more radical