Interviewed by host Elijah Johnson , Mark Thornton explains how the Austrian view of economics contrasts with the mainstream view, how you cannot have a truly free market without sound money, and how competing currencies could benefit our economy now. This is part one of a two part
If you examine the attached graph one factor that might jump out at you is that the current “recovery” has been the worst one since WWII in terms of the percentage job losses and the time necessary for a full recovery in the job market making it, already, the most expensive since WWII. Another less clear, but equally valid observation is that the
Volume 6, No. 4 (Winter 2003) It seems odd that economists would find the idea of falling prices to be a bad thing. Likewise, it is peculiar that policymakers would fear deflation and be willing to take drastic measures to insure the so-called “defeat” of deflation. Policymakers and politicians, after all, would supposedly want the general
Inequality is a top news items for 2015 driven largely by the Baltimore riots, the minimum wage debate, Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century , and now the entry of socialist Bernie Sanders into the race for US president. The Left wants more welfare, better schools, free college, enhanced job training, and more. The Right, in
The Federal Reserve and in particular fiat money ruins the incentive to save for a better future. Half of all Americans have zero dollars in a savings account and another 20% have less than $1,000. You can see this clearly on the graph. Personal savings as measured by the government peaked in the final days of the Bretton Woods gold standard in
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.