The cost of communication has plummeted. Costly labor-intensive media such as smoke signals, Pyramid carvings and dense hieroglyphics on large stones have yielded to the trivial costs of email. Deflation rules. Consider long distance rates. Down! Deflated like zeppelins competing with Boeing 757s. Only old-fashioned correspondence, processed by
As a precondition to joining the European currency, member states had to abide by quantitative fiscal criteria, explained below, sharply limiting their room to maneuver. Since the adoption of the fiscal pact and the launch of the euro, many countries chose to flaunt it, to the chagrin of others that steadfastly adhered to it. This article explains
After five months and seven rounds of contentious negotiations, the Bush administration and the American textile lobby got what they wanted: a cap on China’s booming export business in the sensitive trade. The agreement sets quotas ( or “ safeguards “ in security speak) for nearly half of the Chinese textile exports to America, such as bras, baby
Welfare/warfare states such as today’s America are distinguished by the ever-tightening grip the collective exercises over the course of their citizens’ lives, as the expression goes, from the cradle to the grave. Such governments are also distinguished, of course, by their propensity to expend not only the interests and energies of their people
Enron : $1 billion write-down of retained earnings, followed by $618 million quarterly loss. 21,000 put out of work in ensuing bankruptcy. CFO Andrew Fastow sentenced to ten years in prison. Jeff Skilling and Kenneth Lay arrested and charged with federal crimes. Worldcom : $10 billion inflation of profits through failure to record expenses. CFO
Cuba and Taiwan, a world apart but both on the 23 rd parallel, are thorns in the side of the mainland behemoth off whose southeastern coast each lies. Like the behemoths themselves, the islands have much in common, and great differences. The situation each presents today speaks volumes about the temper and nature of its dominant neighbor’s
After years of grueling war, victory must be close at hand. America’s fighting men and women have defended the flag and advanced freedom’s cause on battlefields across the globe in their hundreds of thousands, and of these, thousands have rendered their last, full measure of devotion. Congress has placed the economy on a war footing with annual
The Group of Eight finance ministers will meet this week in Perthshire, Scotland to address various weighty financial decisions that their governments have expropriated from the more-capable hands of their citizens. Thanks in part to the globally choreographed performances of dozens of famous, caring, and would-be-famous-and-caring rock stars, the
President Bush tells us to drive less and limit trips to only the essentials, while the EPA’s EnergyStar program is urging us all to “change a lightbulb” in our homes, from a regular one to a government-approved one, which they claim will save hundreds of millions. You are also supposed to take a pledge : “I pledge to do my part to save energy
In about every presidential administration for the last three decades the vile underbelly of an Executive-Branch organization spills out into the open. Right now an implosion is in progress at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that could fully expose not only its phony pretense as a protector of the public’s health but the agency as 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.