John Maynard Keynes often employed flowery language like “animal spirits” and “liquidity trap” to describe things he did not understand. He was, after all, more of a bureaucrat than an economist. In fact, he would best be described as an anti-economist because he eschewed things like supply and demand and held the opinion that government could run
This is the most important book on public policy to be published in a long time. Benson takes on the most pervasive government activity, the criminal justice system, and addresses the critical issue of our high crime rate. There are no clear “academic” solutions to this problem, but Benson presents a clear and sensible solution derived from the
It has been often said that our future rests with the next generation. If that is true, then it is a scary prospect. The millennial generation (ages 18-34) increasingly sees itself, politically, as socialist. I personally know a couple of young men who declare themselves Marxists! Although that is frightening enough, remember the context in which
ABSTRACT: Peter H. Lindert and Jeffrey G. Williamson, in their book Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality since 1700 (Princeton University Press, 2016), explore the reasons for the decline in the share of income captured by top earners in industrialized nations. Embedded in their take on the “Greatest Leveling” is a push for progressive
This article published in the Monthly Review, March 2005 , meaning this year, not a century ago: “The only solution, as difficult as this may be to contemplate at the present time, is socialism; socialism, that is, as the socialist movement always meant it to be: revolutionary, democratic, egalitatarian, environmental, necessitating mass
The Huntsville Times was prompted by Bill Gates’s good comments on education to interview others on the topic, and I was among them. Note the person quoted at the end of the piece, who suggests that the solution to the public school problem is for the government to get the kids earlier (age 3) and teach them longer. The story: Virtual classroom is
Jacques Chirac seems to be on the verge of waging all out war against the gravest possible threat to his country: ultra-liberalism (hint: that’s what Misesians favor). He has announced that ultra-liberalism is the “communism of our time” because it poses a threat the Euro social model in which politicians and bureacrats run people’s lives. Good
Here is an interesting table comparing 9 schools of economic thought. You can certainly quibble with some of the content, but it makes for a good “cheat sheet” for a history of economic thought class or a lecture on schools of economics. Interestingly, the Austrian school is the “middle of the road” of the table. The “Developmentalist” school
In the wake of the downfall of the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of capitalism in China, I was asked to teach the comparative-economic-systems class at Auburn University for the summer term in 1989. My only exposure to the topic had been as an undergraduate student, where my teacher was a Cold War–era professor
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.