The Pew Research Center has released “A Barometer of Modern Morals: Sex, Drugs, and the 1040” . Here are the results of a poll of 745 people, with the percentages of people classifying each behavior as morally wrong: 85% Married People Having an Affair 79% Not Reporting All Income on Taxes 61% Drinking Alcohol Excessively 52% Having an Abortion
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia differs from almost every other member of the federal government inasmuch as I’ve always at least wanted to like him. I like his temperament, and his Supreme Court opinions (or even better, the dissents) are almost always a great read because they’re well written and unafraid to ridicule his colleagues’
Most years, the millions of last minute tax filers make April 15 National Procrastination Day. This year, procrastinators can stall even longer, because April 15 falls on a weekend, pushing the deadline to April 17 (April 18 in states celebrating Patriot’s Day on the 17th). But those honoring this unofficial holiday feel guilty about it. That
According to this UPI article , Will Smith is gearing up to make Greenbacks , a movie about “a plot to destabilize the world economy though a sophisticated money counterfeiting plot.” Should be amusing to see the movie’s treatment of the economics involved, whether it gets them right or wrong. Given that it’s from the people who brought us Double
I suppose that I wasn’t entirely aware of how hard-core Henry Hazlitt was on the gold question until re-reading The Inflation Crisis and How to Resolve it : This brings us to gold. It is the outstanding merit of gold as the monetary standard that it makes the supply and the purchasing power of the monetary unit independent of government, of office
Prof. Richard Lindzen, a genuine climate expert from MIT, has written a very valuable op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal describing the role of government funding and media hype in discussions of global warming. The article can be accessed here . The article appeared yesterday, April 12,
Few issues are more frequently commented on than the shifting of American manufacturing to locations outsides the United States, in order to take advantage of lower foreign wage rates, particularly in Asia. This shifting is what is meant by “offshoring.” With equal or greater frequency lamentations are heard concerning the United States’ chronic
If so, expect your fees to rise, with TiVo’s recent $74 million patent lawsuit victory , sure to be leveraged against cable TV companies who offer TiVo-like DVRs. (The award might actually be tripled, because the jury found the infringement was “willful.”) This report of the decision states “In a case cast as crucial to TiVo’s (TIVO) survival, a
[Here is a short talk I delivered a few days ago] To give a short talk on the work of the Mises Institute is like giving a short talk on the history of Europe or a two-minute introduction to the social sciences or a brief overview of the philosophy of mind. It is impossible to cover every point, so I would like to just sketch the rationale and
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.