Mises Institute

Policymakers know they hold immense power to regulate and punish firms that don’t play ball. Industry leaders know this too. So it’s likely both sides will indeed end up “playing ball." The Democrats in Congress want comprehensive regulation of social media which will ultimately allow regime regulators to decide what is and what is not “disinformation.” This has become very clear as Congress ha...

According to a relatively new field of economics called behavioral economics (BE), emotions play an important role in an individual’s decision-making process. On this the Nobel laureate Vernon Smith writes, People like to believe that good decision making is a consequence of the use of reason, and that any influence that the emotions might have is antithetical to good decisions. What is not app...

That gold was used as money in the past is merely a historical fact. But the fact that gold was a form of private money, and thus not easily manipulated for government schemes, made it a target of countless intellectual and governmental assaults. Original Article: " They Don't Hate Gold Because It's Gold. They Hate It Because It's Not Government Money. " This Audio Mises Wire is generously spon...

President Trump’s protectionist trade measures against China and other external partners have not caused a reduction of the total US trade deficit. The latter actually grew further as China’s exports found indirect ways into the US and massive domestic spending schemes were expanded during the pandemic. Almost three years after the Trump administration unleashed the trade war on China, hostilit...

You know hypocrisy, as when the pot calls the kettle black? Well, this news report gives new meaning to the idea: The rise in American consumer debt has been accompanied by a sharp increase in complaints about aggressive and sometimes unscrupulous tactics by debt collection agencies, a phenomenon that has government regulators increasingly concerned. So the government is concerned about rough t...

Many episodes of monetary inflation, some even long and virulent, do not feature a denouement in a sustained high CPI inflation over many years. Instead, these episodes have the common characteristics of asset inflation and the monetary authority levying tax in various forms – principally inflation tax or monetary repression tax. For the monetary inflation to undergo combustion into sustained h...

There’s a middle class of businesses that are the backbone of the economy. Professor Saras Sarasvathy coined that term, and we’re pleased to adopt it. These businesses sit between the big corporations of the major stock indexes and the VC-funded gazelles and unicorns of Silicon Valley and Silicon Hills. The watchwords for these backbone businesses are duration and durability . They last and pro...

Congress is hard at work on a stimulus bill. Doubtless their efforts will pay off. Does anyone stop to ask what it is about stimulus that stimulates? And what, exactly, does it stimulate? Start by spending a lot of money that the government does not have, borrow the difference, and the central bank prints the difference and buys up the debt. But does that increase the production of useful thing...

“If the market continues to see wild swings based on Elon Musk tweets, it’s going to be a big setback for this asset class,” Matt Maley, chief market strategist for Miller Tabak + Co. told Bloomberg . “The fact that it sees such wild swings to the tweets from one person takes away the legitimacy of the asset class.” Reminds a bit of a financial planner who told me bitcoin is “manipulated” and f...

Historically, meetings of the largest economies in the world have been essential to reach essential agreements that would incentivize prosperity and growth. This was not the case this time. The G7 meeting agreements were light on detailed economic decisions, except on the most damaging of them all. A minimum global corporate tax. Why not an agreement on a maximum global public spending? Imposin...

The idea of universal basic income (UBI) is near the peak of the hype cycle. Democrat Andrew Yang made it the flagship issue of his presidential campaign. A small industry of advocates tirelessly push arguments in its favor. I will address two in this piece. The first: the claim of permanent elimination of jobs. The second: the resulting need for income to compensate for the fall in purchasing ...

Scotland still hasn’t given up on holding another independence referendum within the next several years. Although London opposes the measure, it is notable that the debate over Scottish secession is not over whether or not a secession vote is moral or legal. Rather, the question is over whether or not such a vote is prudent at this time. This is quite a departure from American politics in which...

This spring Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes asked Fed chair Jerome Powell, “And you believe the system, because of the oversight of the Fed, has the wherewithal to stand a significant shock to the markets?” After pointing out that the markets survived a 25 percent drop in GDP and the loss of 30 million jobs last covid spring, Powell admitted that “some parts of the financial system had to be bailed ...

These days it’s not your typical latte-sipping millennials who are going woke. Taking a stroll around America’s largest metro areas will have one believe social justice is the latest fad that’s sweeping across corporate boardrooms. Much has been written about woke capital —businesses’ recent pivot to signal their affinity for leftist movements—and what it means for society at large. Suffice it ...

Mises.org editor Ryan McMaken joins the show to tackle some of the toughest and most controversial chapters of Rothbard's groundbreaking treatise The Ethics of Liberty . McMaken and Jeff Deist cover abortion, the rights of children, defamation, and all the "what ifs" contained in lifeboat situations. They also move into Part III of the book, where Rothbard pulls no punches concerning the nature...