Two years ago I was on a faculty committee to choose the one book that incoming freshman would be asked to read and discuss in discussion groups during freshman orientation. It was the school of business’s turn to choose the book, so I thought it would be valuable, for once, for the freshman to read a book that was not the latest popular left-wing
Both of the major political parties in the U.S. long ago adopted the rhetoric of the socialist Left with regard to tax deductions. The mortgage interest deduction, the state and local taxes deduction, and all others, are denigrated either as “loopholes” that need to be slammed shut or as sources of needless confusion. A November 8, 2004
In the wake of the tsunami disaster in Indonesia, governments throughout the world are doing what governments always do: throwing money at the problem. In this case, the money is referred to as “foreign aid.” The billions of dollars (or the equivalent in other currencies) being sent to Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and other devastated areas are
In his newly-released federal budget President George W. Bush promises to reduce farm subsidies. Predictably, on the day the budget was made public there were well-choreographed “protests” by all the usual suspects, mostly millionaire corporate farmers camped out at the Mayflower or Four Seasons hotels in Washington, D.C. for a few days. The
Supply and demand have been allowed to work — at least in a limited way — in energy markets, resulting in ups and downs in gasoline prices. Strong demand coupled with regulatory supply restrictions that were worsened by several hurricanes caused gasoline prices to go up. Then as hurricane-damaged refineries were repaired, gas prices began to
Most of the commentary on the ongoing propaganda campaign against Wal-Mart ignores what is probably the most important aspect of it: It is primarily a labor union-inspired campaign against Wal-Mart employees , as well as the company in general. This is the essential truth of all union organizing campaigns. Historically, all of the violence, libel,
The single most important tax reform of the 1980s was the indexation of the federal income tax to inflation and the reduction of the number of federal income tax brackets from fifteen to three. Prior to that, ordinary middle class workers were pushed up into higher and higher tax brackets by simply receiving cost-of-living pay increases. The
Wal-Mart-hating interventionists are running out of reasons to hate Wal-Mart. Incapable of making any kind of coherent argument that America’s biggest retailer is harmful to consumers or workers, they are now rewriting American business history — including the history of antitrust regulation — to vent their hatred of an institution that has done
[ This article is excerpted from chapter 7 of How Capitalism Saved America .] Free-market capitalism is a network of free and voluntary exchanges in which producers work, produce, and exchange their products for the products of others through prices voluntarily arrived at. State capitalism consists of one or more groups making use of the coercive
One of the oldest myths about capitalism is the notion that factories that offer the poor higher wages to lure them off the streets (and away from lives of begging, stealing, prostitution, or worse) or away fom back-breaking farm labor somehow impoverishes and exploits them. They are said to work in “sweatshops” for “subsistence wages.” That was
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.