What Happens when the Public Realizes Inflation Will Get Worse

Ludwig von Mises

[Excerpted from Human Action, Scholar’s Edition, pp. 423–425]

The deliberations of the individuals which determine their conduct with regard to money are based on their knowledge concerning the prices of the immediate past. If they lacked this knowledge, they would not be in a position to decide what the appropriate height of their cash holdings should be and how much they should spend for the acquisition of various goods.

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 Businessmen Make Such Unimpressive Politicians

Connor Mortell

In 2016, we watched time and time again as polls stated that people liked Donald Trump because he is a businessman and came from outside the world of politics. Dozens of factors led to his election but there is no doubt that among voters this mindset of the potential for a savvy businessman in charge was at play. However, looking at it in hindsight, can we really say that a savvy businessman was ever in charge? Perhaps the most successful libertarian there has ever been, the great Dr. Ron Paul, wrote explaining that when it comes to spending the argument was always “Trump vs. Trump.” He’d speak seeking to cut taxes and then would ask for raises on spending and print money to close the gap. Dr. Paul goes as far as to say, “Following the President’s constantly changing policies can make you dizzy.” So why is it that this businessman would come into office and then act in direct opposition to the business-oriented nature he claimed he’d demonstrate? The easy answer would be that it turned out that he was never really a good businessman to begin with. There may or may not be merit to this argument. But it does not matter whether or not he was a competent businessman, because the minute he took his oath of office, he became part of a bureaucracy and any expectations of fiscal or monetary responsibility were immediately lost. This is because it is impossible to run a government “like a business.” There’s no economic calculation and no way of measuring profit.

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.

How the “Respectable” Media Serves the Political Elite

Murray N. Rothbard

[Editor’s note: Two interviews from August 1992 given by Murray Rothbard to the Swedish student publication Svensk Linje (continuously published since 1942) were recently discovered in the Rothbard Archives and translated by Sven Thommesen for the first time. In this interview, Rothbard offers his thoughts on the 1992 election and the role of the “respectable” media in promoting the campaign of Bill Clinton.]

“The Great Reset” Is the Road to Socialism Mises Warned Us About

Tho Bishop

Through the sheer power of his intellectual output, Ludwig von Mises established himself as one of the most important intellectuals of the twentieth century. His work Human Action remains a foundational text of the Austrian school. His critique outlining the impracticality of socialism was vindicated with the fall of the Soviet Union and remains without a serious intellectual challenge today.

Inflation Is Killing the Recovery

Daniel Lacalle

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Last week, Ned Davis Research published a note titled “Turns Out, Growth Looks like It Was Transitory—Inflation Is More Sticky.” There are many factors that show us that consumers and salaries are being eaten away by inflation, leading to an abrupt halt in the recovery. Autos and new home sales plunged, real disposable personal income has plummeted, and real median wage growth is lower than inflation.

A Global Fiat Currency: “One Ring to Rule Them All”

Thorsten Polleit

1.

Human history can be viewed from many angles. One of them is to see it as a struggle for power and domination, as a struggle for freedom and against oppression, as a struggle of good against evil.

Is an Educated Population Really Necessary for Innovation and Growth?

Lipton Matthews

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Lamentations that the waves of innovation are receding have engulfed policy circles. Distinguished economist Robert Gordon avers that the days of transformative innovations are over. Like Peter Thiel, he is disappointed at the incremental nature of modern-day inventions. The declinist thesis is predicated on the assumption that groundbreaking innovations like the steam engine, electricity, and the telephone are becoming exceedingly rare. Educing evidence to prove this observation has been quite easy, but we are less astute at understanding why innovation is declining.

Before a Bust, There Is Always a Boom (and Malinvestment)

Frank Shostak

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

For most commentators lending is associated with money. However, is this the case? When a saver lends money, what he/she in fact lends to a borrower is final consumer goods that he/she did not consume. Therefore, what a lender lends to a borrower is savings and not money as such. 

Vaccine Mandates: Who Will Comply, and Why?

Jovana Diković

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

The presumption of venality, as it is inscribed in new measures against the pandemic, is extremely interesting, at least from an anthropological point of view. The measures implemented over large parts of Europe include, most notably, covid certificates. Elsewhere, in addition to covid certificates there has even been an incentive for games of chance among those who are vaccinated. The purpose of covid certificates is to make the life of the unvaccinated more difficult and hence to exert additional pressure toward vaccination. The main assumption is that if people feel their quality of life is impaired (through an inability to go to restaurants, theaters, to attend or take part in sporting activities, and so on) then this response would be the easiest way out. Surely, they will act as expected and get the vaccine.

Debunking Biden’s Claim We Must “Protect the Vaccinated from the Unvaccinated”

Ryan McMaken

The official line on vaccines is that they are extremely effective at protecting against serious illness. And yet, these same people are also claiming that the unvaccinated are a major threat to the vaccinated.

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.

Why the Fed Is So Desperate to Hide Price Inflation

Thorsten Polleit

Speaking at the Jackson Hole meeting on August 27, 2021, Federal Reserve (Fed) chairman Jerome J. Powell indicated that he supported “tapering” toward the end of this year and hastened to add that interest rate hikes are still a long way off. The term “tapering” means that the central bank reduces its monthly purchases of bonds and slows down the monthly increase in the quantity of money accordingly. In other words, even with tapering, the Fed will still churn out newly printed US dollar balances, but to a lesser extent than before; that is, it will still cause monetary inflation, but less than before. 

Remember When Conservatives “Canceled” Anyone against the War on Terror? I Do.

James Bovard

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Life in American changed twenty years ago after the 9/11 attacks. Many Americans became enraged at anyone who did not swear allegiance to President George W. Bush’s anti terrorism crusade. Anyone who denied “they hate us for our freedoms” automatically became an enemy of freedom.

Can Taxation Be Justified?

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

David Gordon

The philosopher Michael Huemer is usually favorable to the free market, and he is also a strong defender of anarchism. Although I disagree with some of the arguments in his defense of anarchism, The Problem of Political Authority, it is an excellent book.

The Role of Intellectuals and Anti-intellectuals

Originally posted on Mises.org

Hans-Hermann Hoppe
The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. —Frédéric Bastiat

Biden’s Rescue Act Targets Americans’ Freedoms

James Bovard

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

Since the 1800s, surly Americans have derided politicians for spending tax dollars “like drunken sailors.” Until recently, that was considered a grave character fault. But Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act shows that inebriated spending is now the path to national salvation.

Recession and Recovery: W.H. Hutt’s View

Robert Blumen

(Originally posted on Mises.org)

There is a considerable Austrian literature on the unsustainable boom driven by credit expansion. When the boom ends, a depression begins. The depression is a transitional period of reduced production that lasts until entrepreneurs restructure capital and labor into sustainable uses. During the depression, there is unavoidable unemployment of both people and productive assets. The recovery is marked by an increase in production and the employment of resources that were idle during the bust.