Biden’s Jobs Plan: How Some Jobs Destroy Wealth
It seems that every time something adverse happens in the labor market, it restarts the partisan battle between those currently in and out of power as to who is a better steward of the economy. That was illustrated by the Bureau
Monetary and Fiscal “Stimulus” Is Undermining the Global Recovery
Expansionary monetary and fiscal policies have gone into overdrive all over the world since the beginning of the pandemic. This raises the obvious question of how long they can last before another crash follows. In its latest World Economic Outlook, from
Walter Block on The Ethics of Liberty
Murray Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty is a sweeping treatise which creates nothing short of a normative political philosophy of liberty. Contra Hume, Rothbard attempts to derive an "ought" from an "is," using natural law precepts and rigorous logic. Professor
These European Countries Beat Poverty and Increased Wealth with Low Taxes and Low Regulation
Social democrats love to denounce low-tax, probusiness regimes as "neoliberal" and as places with more poverty. But the reality is that parts of Europe that embraced markets most reduced poverty while making their citizens richer. Original Article: "These European Countries Beat
The Not-So-Golden Mean
Steven B. Smith in Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes (Yale University Press, 2021) gives us an excellent example of a fallacious way of arguing. Once we see how Smith, a Yale political science and philosophy professor who should
Why the Misuse of the Word “Efficiency” Is Such a Problem
An important impediment to understanding valuable insights economists have to offer is that they have trained people to ignore their pronouncements on efficiency. Economists’ common use of a standard of efficiency known as “potential compensation,” which is at odds with
Do Austrians “Hate Math”?
Being a former academic myself, I have many unpleasant memories of endless debates over methodology. Among these topics is the question of how quantitative methods ought to be used in economics, and when it is appropriate (if ever) for use in
How the Fed Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Easy Money
In this selection from chapter 19 of Reassessing the Presidency (newly available as an ebook from the Mises Store), Joseph Salerno examines one example of how the Federal Reserve and U.S. presidents work together to expand
Does Bitcoin Use “Too Much” Electricity?
US senator Elizabeth Warren claimed last week that bitcoin uses too much electricity. In doing so, she makes a judgment about the "correct" amount of electricity use. But it raises the question of who is entitled to make such a judgment. It’s
I, Joy
Unfortunately, this oldest and most general result of the theory of social phenomena [viz., the spontaneous coordination of individual efforts] has never been given a title which would secure it an adequate and permanent place in our thinking. The limitations