Somehow, an all-star Hollywood cast created The Company Men (2010) and it got past the usual censors. The movie is an effective rebuttal to Arthur Miller’s 1949 Death of a Salesman . The recently-laid-off characters spend the movie living their lives after rounds of layoffs. In doing so, they effectively act out a debate between a proponent of
It seems like the media will never stop promoting the myth that public school teachers are “underpaid.” The most recent example is the front-page story in Time , “This Is What It’s Like to Be a Teacher in America.” Time tells of a woman who makes $55,000 per year teaching but works two other jobs in order to “pay the bills.” The article includes
[ Reprinted from Free Market Economics: A Basic Reader , compiled by Bettina G. Greaves .] The division of labor is a subject which has fascinated social scientists for millennia. Before the advent of modem times, philosophers and theologians concerned themselves with the implications of the idea. Plato saw as the ultimate form of society a
One of the more persistent myths about capitalism is that wealth and resources are “wasted” when spent on luxuries. At the core of this myth is the idea that when you buy, say, a $5,000 75-inch LED television, the money you spend on that item goes only to improve the life of the person who ends up owning the television. “Look at those rich people
One of the challenges in looking at income and wealth data is getting a sense of how different demographic groups are affected. It’s relatively easy to find median income and wealth data over time for the entire population, for example. But then problems of interpretation immediately present themselves. For example, if the data is household data,
[Newsweek column from May 26, 1952, and reprinted in Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt.] At his press conference on May 8, Mr. Truman, asked whether the chief danger was inflation or deflation, replied that the country had to guard against both: and that was why it was necessary to have control powers — to prevent either one. There
[Newsweek column from March 21, 1949, and reprinted in Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt .] Tablets, said to be 200 years older than the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, have just been translated which show that the ancient kingdom of Eshnunna had wage control and price control. The news ought not to have come as a surprise. For the
“As the owner, I’m looking at it big picture and long term.” Those are the words of Eric Mason, owner of a Chick-fil-A in Sacramento, CA. Mason was talking about his employees and sales. He believes successful restaurants are an effect of happy, well-paid workers. That’s why he’s offering his employees wage increases that would boost their pay
“We can’t welcome all the misery of the world but we must take our share.” This is a maxim whose popularity speaks volumes about our apprehension over poverty and immigration. This seemingly benevolent vocabulary, however, limits debate. It insists that generous people will welcome more demands on the taxpayer’s pocketbooks. The immigrant must be
As long as I’ve known him, my father has always been the entrepreneurial type. Even now, in his seventies, he picks up side jobs both to keep busy and to have a little extra spending money. Throughout my childhood and youth, he had always been an independent insurance broker and salesman. He often employed one or two people to help with the phones
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.