The idea of private coinage seems so strange today that it is worth examining carefully. We are used to thinking of coinage as a “necessity of sovereignty.” Yet, after all, we are not wedded to a “royal prerogative,” and it is the American concept that sovereignty rests, not in government, but in the people. How would private coinage work? In the
French assignat , 1795 First printed in 1896 and as unfortunately pertinent today as it was then, Dr. Andrew Dickson White’s Fiat Money Inflation in France chronicles the national suicide of an imposing empire that choked to death on one of mankind’s more foolish delusions — the stubborn belief that money does grow on trees. Dr. White’s style
Multimillionaires like Hillary Clinton and Lou Dobbs butter their bread by defending middle-class Americans. They are correct about the problem, but their suggested remedies — protectionism, welfare, regulation, subsidy, and tax reform — would only make the problem worse. The middle class actually faces many important economic problems, but in
[This talk was delivered at the Mises Institute’s Supporters Summit, November 1, 2008, Auburn, Alabama. An MP3 audio version of this talk is available for download .] Today we stand at a point in time that is the beginning of the end of an economic era when the US dollar dominated the global economy. The dollar still dominates world financial
You are uptown in a shopping district of a small community, and you pass by the meat shop, the wine shop, the coffee shop, two churches side by side, a coin shop, an antique store and hold it right there. A coin shop? This is irresistible, because, as implausible as this may sound, all political truth can be found in a coin shop. And not just
Barack Obama’s tax advisers recently posted a piece in the Wall Street Journal about their candidate’s tax plans. Their article was designed to triangulate, painting their candidate as a tax cutter and the Republican opposition as a secret tax raiser. It was well written and well argued — not that you can really trust anything you read about what
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.