For decades the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget have consistently understated the benefits of tax cuts with “static analysis” that ignores how such policy changes provide added incentives to work, save, and invest. The result has been bigger and more powerful government at the expense of a smaller private
During the press conference on May 19, 1998, announcing the broad range anti-trust action of the Department of Justice against Microsoft, there was just one piece of evidence cited against the company that pointed to some effort to subvert consumer choice. In an internal memo Microsoft employed the phrase “make the customer” use one of the
In the 19th century, the legal profession was open. There were no mandates on the kind or duration of education a person had to have. No law restricted anyone from offering his services. The only complaints were from lawyers who wanted to force “higher standards” upon the market. Today, the law profession is closed off to all but those who can
“We have progressively abandoned the freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past.” (F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom ). Economic thinking today is divided into many schools of thought, such as the following : the Keynesians, the Post- Keynesians, the Rational Expectations School, the
The new issue of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics (Summer 1998), the flagship scholarly journal of the Mises Institute, features a never-before-published article by Ludwig von Mises entitled “Monopoly Prices.” The manuscript, kept in the Grove City College Archives, is marked “Revised, July 1944.” It is his most in-depth treatment of
Some months ago, at a hearing before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, the head of the Netscape corporation asked the audience in the room how many owned a personal computer and then how many of those used Microsoft’s Windows operating system. Upon a show of hands demonstrating that almost everyone in the room who owned a computer used Windows,
Editorial in Investor’s Business Daily October 21, 1998 The Hollow Case Against Microsoft Washington’s arrogant trustbusters have finally put Microsoft on trial. With Bill Gates and the software giant firmly in the government cross hairs, are the feds going for the kill? Maybe. A government attorney told the court Monday that Microsoft Corp.’s
The Journal of Commerce September 7, 1998 Strange things happened at General Motors this summer. Huge swatches of its highly paid, coddled, unionized labor force went on strike. The result was catastrophic: GM plants all over North America shut down, causing the company to lose $75 million a day, idling 175,000 other workers, causing an 81% drop
Joe Klein of the Justice Department is at it again, striking out at successful businesses while claiming to be protecting the public. As the man behind the attack on Microsoft, he now claims the market can’t be trusted to handle credit-card distribution either. His target this time is the supposed monopoly held by Visa and MasterCard. Together
The Soviet state punished “economic crimes”: entrepreneurial actions that went against the central plan and resulted in “excess” profits. It didn’t matter that the public need for food, clothing, and liquor could only be served because a few heroes were willing to take the risk of prosecution. The will of the bureaucrat was all that mattered,
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.