A few upscale restaurants in the United States recently have ended the practice of tipping their wait staff, preferring a fixed labor cost method of compensation. This attempt to change this long-standing cultural practice presents a fascinating opportunity to explore a variety of economic concepts including principal-agent problems,
Minimum wage laws are often put forward as regulations that help everyone. If anyone is hurt, it is wealthy capitalists who can afford to lose a little money. Unfortunately, this is rarely the reality. In order to decode the impact of minimum wage laws, one has to examine the effects on multiple levels, examining both the seen and the unseen
When reading about the curious case of Garrison Keillor, the public radio icon fired for what he considers an innocent misunderstanding—or was it payback for his defense of Senator Al Franken?—I noticed a line in a comments section about where today’s raging response to sexual harassment (among other fruits of the sexual revolution) is likely to
Join us at the Mises Institute at 10:30 a.m. CDT on Thursday, 22 June, for this free lecture presented by Anthony Gill, professor of Political Science at the University of Washington. A few upscale restaurants in the United States recently have ended the practice of tipping their wait staff, preferring a fixed labor cost method of compensation.
Throughout history, the state has justified itself on the grounds that it is necessary to protect us from others whose habits and beliefs — we are meant to believe — are dangerous. For millennia, this fiction was easy to maintain because most people interacted so little with people outside their nearly autarkic — and therefore impoverished
The US unemployment rate stood at 4.3% in July against 4.4% in the month before. The number of unemployed stood at 6.981 million – an increase of 4,000 from June. A relatively low unemployment rate is considered by most experts as an important factor for economic growth. This way of thinking based on the view that a reduction in the number of
I could see no reason why I should, at the end of each week, pour the reward of my toil into the purse of my master. When I carried to him my weekly wages, he would, after counting the money, look me in the face with a robber-like fierceness, and ask, “Is this all?” He was satisfied with nothing less than the last cent. He would, however, when I
The headlines this week were dominated by last weekend’s events at Charlottesville. Of course, instead of rejecting the the sort of overly politicized society that makes such escalation inevitable , politicians of both sides tried to seize the moment. As such, we have the returning distraction over the battle over confederate monuments — an issue
An influential left-wing think tank has called for the government to create millions of jobs for those without a college degree, leading to headlines like The Nation’s declaration that “It’s Time for the Government to Give Everyone a Job.” One fatal flaw of such a plan was exposed in the comments section of that article, when a commentator named
Recognizing the calamitous erosion of incentives that would be brought about by a straight guaranteed-income plan, some reformers have advocated what they call a “negative income tax.” This proposal was put forward by the prominent economist, Professor Milton Friedman, of the University of Chicago, in his book Capitalism and Freedom , which
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.