The Free Market 14, no. 7 (July 1996) The media often cite economists on why taxes should be cut. For example, the Wall Street Journal reports “widespread agreement” among economists that federal gas taxes are too low. And the Washington Post cites the “authority” of economists who says a $500-per child tax credit is “fiscal snake oil.” Why do
The Free Market 15, no. 1 (January 1997) People who advocate tax-funded school vouchers for private schools frequently hail the G.I. Bill of Rights education vouchers for World War II veterans as a model. In truth, the G.I. Bill was a budget-busting middle-class entitlement scheme that had destructive effects on higher education, and set the stage
The Free Market 15, no. 3 (March 1997) The welfare state keeps being reinvented under new labels. In 1993, the Clinton administration renewed the Bush program (dreamed up by then HUD secretary Jack Kemp) called “Moving to Opportunity” (MTO). It gave welfare recipients housing vouchers worth as much as $1,677 per month for rental housing in
The Free Market 16, no. 6 (June 1998) Having failed to nationalize health care at the beginning of its first term, the Clinton administration seeks to nationalize children in its second. With little opposition from Republicans, the administration has proposed spending tens of billions of dollars on subsidized day care, mostly through federal
The Free Market 16, no. 11 (November 1998) The coalition of government bureaucrats, politicians, trial lawyers, and “political activists” who have orchestrated the demonization of “Big Tobacco” are about to wage a similar smear campaign against what the pressure group Common Cause has labeled “Big Booze.” The beer, wine, and liquor industries
The Free Market 17, no. 1 (January 1999) Unreconstructed Keynesians the world over are now calling for a “Global New Deal” ostensibly to put an end to the business cycle once and for all. President Clinton championed this view in a recent speech before a joint meeting of the World Bank and IMF in which he repeatedly cited President Franklin D.
The Free Market 17, no. 3 (March 1999) If there were justice in the world, Joan Claybrook, the head of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration during the Carter administration, would be handcuffed to the steering column of a Volkswagen Beetle while an air bag was repeatedly blown up in her face. While in the government
The Free Market 17, no. 4 (April 1999) The journalist, television commentator, and former presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan has been sharply criticized by his fellow Republicans for allegedly betraying Republican party “free-market” principles in his new book, The Great Betrayal. In the book Buchanan argues for protectionism and claims
The Free Market 18, no. 1 (January 2000) A strong economy is the mortal enemy of the welfare bureaucracy. If Americans are productive and prospering, who needs all those welfare bureaucrats? So, to eliminate the threat of diminished funding of its pay, privileges, and perks, the Washington welfare bureaucracy, led by President Clinton, is
The Free Market 24, no. 10 (October 2004) In Human Action , Ludwig von Mises wrote that labor unions have always been the primary source of anticapitalistic propaganda. I was reminded of this recently when I saw a bumper sticker proclaiming one of the bedrock tenets of unionism: “The Union Movement: The People Who Brought You the Weekend.”
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.