While Adam Smith originated the doctrine that profits are a deduction from what is naturally and rightfully wages, Marx carried that doctrine to its ultimate limit, in the claim that the greed of the capitalists drives them to deduct so much from what rightfully belongs to the wage earners that the latter are left only with minimum subsistence.
Profits are sales minus costs. The costs reflect expenditures of money made in the past, sometimes, as in the case of depreciation on buildings, decades in the past. In contrast, the sales reflect money spent in the present, or at least in the current year. To the extent that the quantity of money and thus volume of spending in the economic system
The Walton family (the owners of Walmart) is currently worth about $190 billion. The Koch Brothers and Mars families (candy bars) are both worth over $100 billion. Such facts are intolerable to socialists, communists, “progressives,” and, sad to say, today’s Democrats. Senator Bernie Sanders wants a tax of 77% on estates over $1 billion. He
The enviro-socialist “climate emergency” crowd was busy earlier this month trying to launch the human equivalent of a cattle stampede by getting people to plunge into socialism to avoid bad weather. There were headlines such as “Greenland is on track to lose most ice on record this year and has already shed 250 billion tons .” It turns out that
In a world in which there are men and women who do not know to which sex they belong, it should not be surprising that there are corporate CEOs who do not know for whom they work. Last month, the CEOs of 181 major corporations agreed that they no longer work simply for their stockholders but also for their “stakeholders,” (i.e., for everyone
Mientras que Adam Smith originó la doctrina de que las ganancias son una deducción de lo que es natural y legítimamente remunerado, Marx llevó esa doctrina hasta su límite último, en la afirmación de que la codicia de los capitalistas los lleva a deducir tanto de lo que pertenece legítimamente a los asalariados que estos últimos sólo quedan con un
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.