Governments Love Inflation, and They Won’t Do Anything to Stop It

Daniel Lacalle

No government looking to massively expand its size in the economy and monetize a soaring deficit is going to act against rising prices, despite claiming the opposite.

What the New Nobel Winners Get Wrong about Economics

Frank Shostak

This year’s Nobel Prize in economics was awarded to David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, Joshua Angrist of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Guido Imbens of Stanford University. The laureates, according to the Nobel Committee have made an important contribution as to how to ascertain cause and effect from observational data.

Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian

George Reisman
My purpose today is to make just two main points: (1) To show why Nazi Germany was a socialist state, not a capitalist one. And (2) to show why socialism, understood as an economic system based on government ownership of the means of production, positively requires a totalitarian dictatorship.

Vaccinate for Global Democracy? The US Empire Turns Therapeutic

Alice Salles

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

After twenty years of failure in Afghanistan, the US government is embarking upon yet another unwinnable war. This time around, however, the military-industrial-congressional complex isn’t pulling the strings.

Biden’s Vaccine Mandates: It’s about Power

Ryan McMaken

(Originally posted on (Mises.Org)

The Biden administration on Thursday announced sweeping new mandates. The new mandates require that all employers with more than one hundred workers require workers to be vaccinated or to test for the virus weekly. The mandates also require covid vaccinations for the 17 million workers at health facilities that receive federal Medicare or Medicaid. Moreover, vaccines are mandated for all employees of the federal government’s executive branch, and for all contractors who do business with the federal government. There is no option to test out in these cases.

If the US Wants to Beat China, Why Is It Copying China’s Socialism?

Mihai Macovei

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Under the Biden administration the US continued escalating the economic and geopolitical frictions with China. At the recent G7 Summit in Carbis Bay, President Biden sought to rally a “united front” against China with traditional G7 allies and new ones such as Australia, India, South Korea, and South Africa and rebuked China on economic policies, human rights, and tensions in the East and South China Seas. The US also persuaded its G7 allies to back a massive infrastructure support package for developing countries. The so-called Build Back Better World Partnership (B3W) is a de facto rival to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But it is far from obvious what the West stands to gain by emulating China’s exorbitant and highly controversial modern “Silk Road” venture.

Compulsory jabs: Pressure grows on Anti-Vaxxers

A growing number of countries and territories around the world are forcing people, often in specific sectors, to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Here is a roundup:

The Global Minimum Corporate Tax Exposes the G-7’s Hypocrisy

Robert Zumwalt

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Austrian school economists have long demonstrated that monopolies only tend to form as a result of government intervention, and “natural monopolies” have virtually never actually existed. Nonetheless, we are continually told by political and academic “experts” that unregulated economies inevitably give rise to monopolies, business trusts, and cartels, all of which they assure us have disastrous consequences for ordinary people. Therefore, we are told, governments are justified in taking forceful action to prevent monopolies from developing or to break them apart.

Central Banks See No Way out of the Low Interest Rate Trap

Thomas Mayer

Gunther Schnabl

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Since the 1980s, slower economic growth in the industrial countries has been accompanied by declining interest rates. They have even turned negative in more recent years. At the same time, investment, productivity, and real GDP growth all have slowed. Recession caused by lockdowns of the economy to fight the corona pandemic in 2020/21 has accelerated the demise of interest. Even as the world economy recovers, central bankers around the world have signaled that interest rates will be kept low for a long time to come. What is going on here? Various economists have provided different theoretical and empirical explanations for the global decline of interest rates.

The Fed Plans to Raise Interest Rates—Years from Now

Ryan McMaken

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee voted to continue with a target federal funds rate of 0.25 percent, and to continue with large-scale asset purchases. According to the committee’s press release:

Capitalism Isn’t a Modern Invention. It’s Medieval.

David Gordon

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

During the eighteenth century, capitalism in Europe “took off” in a way it had not done before, and as a result the West surpassed all other areas of the world in economic growth. What led to this transformation? Max Weber offers the most famous answer. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905), he traces the new system to the Puritans. Before them, though there were rich merchants, substantial savings and investment by private individuals was unusual. The Puritans changed matters. They viewed the self-disciplined pursuit of wealth without indulgence in luxury consumption as a sign that God had predestined them to salvation. 

Consent of the Governed?

Robert Higgs

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

What gives some people the right to rule others? At least since John Locke’s time, the most common and seemingly compelling answer has been “the consent of the governed.” When the North American revolutionaries set out to justify their secession from the British Empire, they declared, among other things: “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.” This sounds good, especially if one doesn’t think about it very hard or very long, but the harder and longer one thinks about it, the more problematic it becomes.

Governments Are Failing at Their Most Basic Duties—While Promising Free Stuff

Gary Galles

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Three city blocks were systematically burned to the ground as hundreds of the local police stood by and viewed the violence. They were obeying orders not to harm the arsonists. The National Guard was called, adding more armed watchers. A passive gendarmerie consorting with open rebellion has rarely been seen in American history, until recently.

Except for variation in detail and numbers, this sort of thing is happening today.

Thanks to Federal Megaspending, the Trade Deficit Has Only Gotten Worse

Mihai Macovei

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

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.

Why Stimulus Does Not Stimulate

Robert Blumen

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

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 things? To answer this, we look at an unlikely friend, Keynes and his General Theory.

With Reverse Repos, The Fed Is Now Trying to Clean up Its Own Mess

Doug French

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

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?” 

World’s Richest Face Tax Blow After 40% Wealth Surge to $8.4 Trillion

(Bloomberg) — Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos has the resources to launch himself into space. Elon Musk does, too.

In many ways, though, the richest people left the vast majority of the world behind long ago.

Biden’s Budget Plan: Weaker Growth and Fewer Jobs

Daniel Lacalle

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

The first thing any economist should do when reading a budget proposal is to analyze the basic macro assumptions and the results presented by the administration. When both are poor, the budget should be criticized. This is the case of the Biden Budget Plan.

The Government Is Going To Start Treating Domestic “Extremists” The Same As ISIS Or Al-Qaeda Terrorists?

Islamic terrorists being shipped off to Guantanamo Bay where they would be endlessly waterboarded and tortured in countless other ways. But now members of Congress are talking about “applying the same penalties” to domestic “extremists” here in the United States. Does that mean that American citizens will soon be grabbed off the streets and sent to prison camps indefinitely without a trial? Personally, I am very much against terrorism wherever it is found all over the globe, but what some of our politicians are proposing to do to fight “domestic extremism” goes way over the line. Once you are done reading this article, I believe that you will share my concerns.

Perspectives on COVID19 from a Christian Epidemiologist

First, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Cathy Stein, PhD. I’m an associate professor of epidemiology*, my PhD. is in epidemiology, I teach an undergraduate course on epidemiology, and my research is focused in infectious disease research. But first and foremost, I am a born-again believer in Jesus Christ. I believe in the sovereignty of God and that the Bible is His inerrant Word. My faith lays the foundation for my worldview. Finally, I must note that my views do not reflect those of my university.