The Free Market 13, no. 12 (December 1995) As Victorian England produced the classic Christmas literary work, Dickens’s A Christmas Carol , 20th-century America has made its distinctive contribution: the Christmas movie. Unfortunately, this genre has continued Dickens’s contrast of the Christmas spirit with the bottom-line heartlessness of
The Free Market 5, no. 7 (July 1987) During patriotic holidays, the news media applaud the Founding Fathers. But rarely does anyone mention some important facts about them: that they were smugglers, tax evaders, and traitors. Not only is this important, it is also praiseworthy; it produced the most advanced civilization ever known. The Revolution
Adapted from the foreword to Principles of Economics , published by the Mises Institute (2007). “There never lived at the same time,” wrote Ludwig von Mises, “more than a score of men whose work contributed anything essential to economics.” One of those men was Carl Menger (1840–1921), professor of political economy at the University of Vienna and
The Free Market 25, no. 3 (March 2007) I was born on the lower East Side of New York and brought up on the lower West Side. (I bring in these facts as introduction to some ideas that may be of general interest, not as autobiography.) Of my earliest experiences I remember practically nothing. But, one incident does come to mind. My father, an
The Free Market 26, no. 4 (April 2008) A central occupation of economists is to analyze the nature, causes, and effects of incentives—the circumstances that are held to motivate human action. Economists agree on the positive role that “good” incentives play to increase production. They also agree that “perverse” incentives have an opposite
The Free Market 26, no. 11 (December 2008) We are now hearing ominous warnings about imminent deflation. Checking the welcome page at AOL this morning, I see that the lead item in the financial news section heralds “The Looming Threat of Deflation.” This headline encapsulates two highly problematic ideas. The first is that deflation would
The Free Market 27, no. 10 (October 2009) In 1918, the Soviet Union became the first country to promise universal “cradle-to-grave” healthcare coverage, to be accomplished through the complete socialization of medicine. The “right to health” became a “constitutional right” of Soviet citizens. The proclaimed advantages of this system were that it
The Free Market 30, no. 5 (May 2012) In a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 3, 2012, President Obama called a budget proposal of his Republican opponents in Congress “thinly veiled Social Darwinism.” What did did the president mean by this comment? The budget proposal in question, he claimed, would require drastic cuts
The Free Market 23, no. 9 (September 2003) A s the payday lending industry has grown rapidly over the past decade, particularly in lower-income and minority communities, the usual critics of free-market commerce have found yet another capitalist whipping boy ripe for attack. These critics, often posturing as “consumer advocates,” charge that
The Free Market 24, no. 7 (July 2004) T he psychology of the anti-market left can be a puzzle, but even more confounding is the mentality of the anti-market right. There are agrarians, medievalists, and nationalists, and, above all, the neoconservatives, who dread the market as much as any socialist from days of yore. Their critique differs, but
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.