Here is an April 29, 2014 headline from Daily Kos: Inflation-adjusted median household income down $4,309 since high point in 2008 . Left and right should at least be able to agree about this. For the average American, there has been no recovery. Median household income rises in a recovery, even if there is a lag. It gets worse. Today’s median
Hillary Clinton’s speech yesterday revealed some of her thoughts about reviving the economy. She said she was trying to “encourage more companies to come off the sidelines and, frankly, for some to use some of that cash that is sitting there waiting to deploy.” This echoes the naïve idea embraced by the Obama administration that economies are
Most Keynesian economists do not want to admit that we are in another depression. They find the word painful. They find it painful because it contradicts the idea that Keynesian economic ideas have ended depressions forever. It also contradicts the idea that the massive and continuing Keynesian stimulus applied by world governments since 2008 has
John Goodman, the top health policy analyst, explains why Obamacare policies are also likely to be canceled. Just because they comply with Obamacare this year doesn’t mean that they will comply next year. The way the law is written guarantees that many policies will not comply for long. In addition, if your policy keeps changing, and the doctors
What does it suggest when Noah Smith, writing in Bloomberg, calls his critics “9/11 truthers enslaved by brain worms?” It suggests that he is very worried. He not only thinks the barbarians are at the gate. He thinks that his cozy citadel might actually fall. And what does it tell us when he accuses his target, Austrian economics, of having
In a recent Bloomberg Views piece, mainstream economist Noah Smith accused his Austrian critics of having “brain worms” and even “anti-semitic overtones.” He then mischaracterized what his critics were saying so that he could ridicule it. This wasn’t very conducive to a dialogue . His last Bloomberg piece, out on July 10, is better. It offers a
A paper written by two staff members of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta tried to quantify what all the Fed’s new money creation and related measures have accomplished. They conclude that unemployment today would be 0.13% higher without the radical measures and 1.0% higher if nothing at all had been done. For some time, the Fed has been trying
In a September 11 Bloomberg article, economist Noah Smith claims that Keynes wasn’t a “ ‘socialist’ “or even a “’progressive’.” He did not favor “a command economy.” Yes he “ was in favor of some amount of wealth redistribution and government intervention into the economy.” But “Keynesian policies are fundamentally . . . about economic stability,
Warren reviewed eleven tenets of contemporary progressivism in a July 18 speech before Netroots Nation . She should be commended. Very often progressive politicians prefer to talk about “hope and change” rather than what they really stand for. Her list is not free of exaggerated rhetoric, such as claiming the mantle of “science” for herself. When
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.