A recent post (Why Social Security Can’t Work) cited an article from First Quadrant which argued that as a society ‘ages’ savings ‘become irrelevant’, only the ratio of workers to retirees counts. I have met the same fallacy being expressed elsewhere. A correspondent of mine cited the hypothetical example of an almost completely aged society,
Like all bankrupt Empires whose corrupt elite clings to power by suppressing the threat posed by bourgeois entrepreneurialism with the aid of the dole-soaked welfare proletariat, the US needs to ensure continuous access to resources from abroad at less than the free market cost its impaired system cannot afford to pay. Armed might is obvious
For a really spectacular example of muddle-headed Keynesianism, go no further than Louis Uchitelles’s NYT article today [read here] . For a snatch: ‘ In other downturns since World War II, the economy moved from healthy growth to contraction and back to healthy growth, all in less than two years. The downward swings were relatively easy to fix.
Former BIS head joins JP Morgan (Times Online): “The former head of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which acts as the central bankers’ central bank, has been appointed president of the subsidiary JP Morgan Chase International. He will act as an international ambassador for the finance house. Sir Andrew [Crockett], 60, will also
“This whole adjustment process has been orderly and the dollar on a trade-weighted basis is still higher today than it has been for most of the last 25 years,” says US Treasury Secretary, John Snow Not only that, the “core” CPI is falling, housing starts up to 20-year highs, and industrial production up at its fastest pace in four years. Wow! That
A weekend press report concerning the rapacity of one minor branch of government has lifted a the curtain on why UK Plc overall is in such a sorry state, as it writhes beneath the Collectivist jackboot of the Neuearbeitspartei. As the Glasgow Herald reports, a week or so back, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency peremptorily wrote to all
Re Roger’s post : who wants to be rational when you can play with the biggest train set in the world? As Kohn put it last week: ‘We will really know the answers only ex post, after the final chapter is written on the current business cycle and after numerous data revisions provide us with a better fix on the behavior of productivity. As
As I’ve been saying , the Japanese economy is shaping up, with evidence given in this report : The [Japanese] government is no longer handing blank cheques to construction companies; in fact, it has been cutting public spending for the last two years. Japan’s growth, this time round, is led by the private sector. Kakutaro Kitashiro, chairman of
A correspondent asks: “I can see that the government might devalue a currency backed by gold by simply decreasing the amount of gold it will pay out in exchange for the banknotes, but how would it devalue a fiat currency? Also, what is meant by the fact that the dollar is the world’s premier reserve currency? What is a reserve currency? Why do
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.