The Free Market 15, no. 9 (September 1997) At last, the Republican Congress has proposed cutting death taxes. It wants the exemption to be raised from $600,000 to $1 million. Not bad for a start. But if Congress is serious about reducing the tax, the rate should immediately index the exemption to the inflation rate. If the inflation of the last
The Free Market 15, no. 9 (September 1997) Academia has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years. Take a look at the recent book catalog of Duke University Press, once a prestigious publishing house. Today it features third-rate, race-obsessed, sex-obsessed, solipsistic tirades masquerading as scholarship. Let’s take a peek. In
The Free Market 15, no. 9 (September 1997) The 50th anniversary of the Marshall Plan provided another occasion for the media to celebrate the government’s good works. The U.S.’s headlong plunge into global welfarism (nearly $100 billion in current dollars), they said, saved European economies after the Second World War. One reporter, Garrick
The Free Market 15, no. 10 (October 1997) Princess Diana’s navy velvet dress, auctioned at Christie’s in New York City, went to the highest bidder for $200,000. Despite explosive media attention given to the sale, the bidder’s identity and even nationality is unknown. The auction house, of course, is sworn to secrecy as a matter of contract. The
The Free Market 15, no. 10 (October 1997) Among the tax discussions on Capitol Hill this year are the proposed changes in the 80-year-old inheritance tax. Part of the Republican tax plan calls for an increase in the estate tax exemption from $600,000 to $1,000,000, with considerably larger exemptions for farmers and other small business owners.
The Free Market 15, no. 10 (October 1997) This summer, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it had effectively decontaminated dioxin-laced soil from what was once the community of Times Beach, Missouri. But while the dirt of this site may now be certifiably clean, it will take much more than an incinerator to decontaminate the
The Free Market 15, no. 10 (October 1997) As recently as 50 years ago, economists regarded the vitality of the economy as consonant with its ability to produce things people want (and would pay for). Today, the economy has been redefined into something called the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. It measures all goods and services brought to
The Free Market 15, no. 10 (October 1997) Free trade and peace go together; protectionism is the handmaiden of war. These were key teachings of the early classical economists, as well as the Austrians. Consistent libertarians have never doubted it. But recently the theory has come under fire from all sides—and led to dangerous coalitions pushing
The Free Market 15, no. 11 (November 1997) For ages, man’s right to exploit the living world—to use it for his purposes—went unquestioned. Trees were for lumber, crops for harvesting, animals for eating and skinning as well, of course, as for companionship. When not consumed directly, the products into which human labor transformed living things
The Free Market 15, no. 11 (November 1997) Making lots of money is evil say the politically correct. It’s sleazy, socially destructive, and almost always immoral, unless profits are given away to left-wing lobbying groups. Typical of this trendy disgust with getting rich through capitalistic means is Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), a
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.