The U.S. Congress is holding hearings on why gasoline prices have risen; pundits are beginning to repeat the anti-capitalist oil company bashing of the 1970s; and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently issued a report blaming prosperity for rising housing prices and self-servingly calling for more HUD subsidies for
Gasoline prices are zooming (45% over last year) and drivers are worried that this may affect their summer vacation plans, while truckers marched on Washington D.C. protesting high diesel costs. Pursuing votes, presidential candidates are scrambling to provide political solutions for the doubling of heating oil prices in New Hampshire in the last
The Free Market 18, no. 1 (January 2000) Jean-Claude Castex is surrounded by miracles, or at least the quest for miracles. As the official feutier, or tender of religious candles, at Lourdes, the spot in France where the Virgin Mary appeared in a grotto to a poor miller’s daughter in the nineteenth century, Castex sees, on average, some 14,000
The state of California is experiencing a fiasco in its electric power system. The system has repeatedly run near the overload point, necessitating brownouts and threatening rolling blackouts. Wholesale power prices in San Diego County and the southern portion of adjacent Orange County have briefly been as high as $5,000 per megawatt hour and,
Recently our campus has been hit with a silly e-mail calling for a “gas out.” Well, not being able to let such ignorance of economics to remain, I wrote a reply that was very well received. However, a religion professor wrote back saying that he agreed the boycott may not work, but of course, we need price controls. I couldn’t resist a good
In an act reminiscent of King Canute’s attempt to keep the tides from rising, New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani garnered publicity for his U.S. senatorial campaign by paying a visit to a local gas station. With the press in tow, Guiliani found a place selling gasoline at more than $2 a gallon. Hizzonor climbed out of his sport utility vehicle and began
In his classic Economics in One Lesson , the great Henry Hazlitt wrote that the lessons of clear economic thinking had to be relearned each generation. As gasoline prices continue to rise out of control, especially in the Midwest, Hazlitt’s words prove to be true once again. It had to happen, of course. Even until recently, many news accounts and
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.