My town, Tallassee, Alabama, is an old mill town. It straddles the Tallapoosa River, which is dammed at that point by the Thurlow Dam to generate electricity. On both sides of the river are the ruins of a massive complex of textile mills which employed a significant portion of the town’s population until 2005. In fact, the current mayor, Johnny
During the three years after World War II, Germans—facing a ruined economy and wildly depreciating currency—turned to cigarettes as a medium of exchange on a massive scale. Allied occupation authorities strictly forbade this black-market currency exchange, but it literally saved the lives of many German civilians—and inadvertently made many
The United States and Israel have each had (and are having) their experiences with socialism. One country learned its lesson (at least once upon a time), while the other did not. The experiences these two countries have had with socialism are practically mirror opposites. The US was officially founded almost 250 years ago, with the signing of the
The “new history of capitalism” (NHC) continues to receive widespread acclaim despite mounting inaccuracies. Although critical reviews have punctured adherents ’ arguments many still cling to wrongheaded assumptions that exaggerate the role of slavery and cotton in powering America’s economic progress. Several industries were complicit in fueling
Instead of approaching the free market abstractly, in this short series, I’ll approach it from the standpoint of my own experience. In short, I’ll treat the free market in an autoethnographic account. Autoethnography is just what the word suggests: it is a genre of ethnographic writing and research that connects the personal to the cultural,
[Published January 27, 1964 in Newsweek. Excerpted from Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt ] President Johnson has declared an “all-out war on human poverty.” It is a laudable aim. It has, in fact, been the aim of rulers, statesmen, economists, reformers, religious leaders — of every man of goodwill — from time immemorial. It is
Politically we seem to be living in some trying times. The political polarization, as captured in the mainstream news media, appears to be intensifying with even acts of destructive violence on the streets and campuses of American cities. At the same time, pictures out of Houston during and following Hurricane Harvey show empathetic assistance and
One of the greatest strengths of Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson is its ability to see the role of interest groups in economic policy. He doesn’t fall for the dubious idea that certain types of economic policy are adopted because they are more logically sound or more convincing. New laws and regulations aren’t adopted because someone made
In this recent CNBC interview , Marc Faber predicts the Fed will lower interest rates yet again this summer, and may even resort to negative interest rates in time. Faber recalls that Yellen had suggested negative rates as a possibility in 2009. Moreover, he suggests that, given the very large difference in yield between US debt and German and
[Every year at Thanksgiving-time I resurrect a column written by a fellow teacher, Kent Dillon, about the real reason we celebrate this holiday. It is a story no longer told in the textbooks because it is thoroughly unPC, and undermines the idea that government is the solver of all problems. We were teachers, as well as part of the crew, at The
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.