Last month, my wife decided to get flu shot for our children, but when she saw the long lines that stretched around whole city blocks, she decided that even if a flu shot were important, nothing could justify subjecting young children to waiting for hours. We may try later – or we may not try at all and just hope we remain healthy this winter.
I have a friend serving time in the federal prison camp near Cumberland, Maryland, and I visit him whenever possible. (Like many other federal prisoners, he should not be incarcerated at all, but that is material for another story at another time.) During my last visit, we were discussing prison medical care, or the lack thereof. “Bill,” he said,
The Martha verdict appears quite popular with the political classes and the vaunted “man on the street,” not to mention the nation’s mainstream journalists. The post-trial comments of one juror, Chappell Hartridge (Juror Number Eight), say it all: “Maybe this is a victory for the little guys who lose money thanks to these kinds of transactions.
In the spring of each leap year, we have a predictable—if tiresome—dog-and-pony show: the candidates for President of the United States denounce the newest gasoline price increases. We lived through this political purgatory four years ago, and it looks as though we will experience it again. Recently, the soon-to-be Democratic nominee for
The latest political fallout of the current “outsourcing” debate came recently when the Bush Administration’s designated “manufacturing czar” turned out to be Anthony F. Raimondo, whose “crime” was to be the head of a firm that recently opened a factory in China . The embarrassed Bushies quickly urged Raimondo to withdraw his nomination, as the
Ken Lay, Martha Stewart, and now Frank P. Quattrone must have been the culprits who caused the recession of 2001 and are also responsible for the relatively poor performance of the economy since then. We can think of no other reason as to why the U.S. Government has embarked upon numerous criminal investigations of business firms and their
With gasoline prices rising above $2 a gallon for unleaded regular, it was only a matter of time before the politicians would start “connecting the dots” as to why prices are where they are today, or at least why they believe the current situation exists. In a recent pronouncement, John Kerry’s campaign declared that consumers are being gouged
In a recent poll on the CNN website, viewers were asked the “poll” question of whether or not they believed that Wal-Mart stores were “good” for the “community.” Perhaps it is not surprising that a large majority answered “no.” Now, this by itself does not mean much, since these online “polls” are not scientific and reflect only the views of the
In the fall of 1990, I flew from Atlanta to San Diego, with our flight hugging the border of the United States and Mexico as we moved across the southwest deserts of New Mexico annd Arizona. The farther west we flew, the more I saw some strange sights, those being great, circular fields of green crops located next to desert sands. Then I saw the
Murray Rothbard once observed the seasonal discovery of “some brand-new category of the pitiable.” The “homeless” fell into this class and he also wondered what the new category would be. The unclothed? The ill-shod? The thirsty? The candy-deprived? “How many more millions are standing in line, waiting to be trotted out for consideration,” he
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.