The Free Market 14, no. 2 (February 1996) Middle-class incomes, the core of what we call the “standard of living,” have been falling for more than two decades. Though people have known this intuitively, only recently have we heard much about it. Economists and the media have been conditioned to look for the ups and downs in the business cycle,
The Free Market 14, no. 3 (March 1996) During the “shutdown” of the federal government, bureaucrats were divided between “essential” and “non-essential.” The designation caused enormous turmoil within agencies. People with lifetime jobs and gigantic pensions were deemed nonessential, while those holding short-term, highly paid, political
The Free Market 14, no. 4 (April 1996) There it is, on the cover of Newsweek , in thick, blood-red letters: “Corporate Killers.” What follows is mug-like photo after photo, some of them grainy, of rich white men, all menacing and “greedy.” They are the CEOs of America’s top corporations. The story’s thesis is simple: they are destroying the
The Free Market 14, no. 5 (May 1996) It was November 25, 1945, and the overpaid workers at General Motors were striking, again. Their gripe? Company profits were up, but wages were not. They demanded a shorter workweek and higher pay. Then as now, this government-backed union was using its legal privileges to stick it to consumers and employers.
The Free Market 14, no. 10 (October 1996) One peculiar aspect of the 1993–95 trade debate was the contradictory purposes—or so it seemed—of Nafta and Gatt. They embrace different theories of how the U.S. should conduct trade policy. The “bilateralistists” think that the U.S. should negotiate trade with one country at a time. The
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.