This article is also available as an Audio Mises Daily Well, another Equal Pay Day has come and gone. This year it came on April 8th to represent how long into 2014 a woman would have to work to make what a man did in 2013. The highlight this year was when White House Press Secretary Jay Carney tried to explain away the pay gap between men and
The standard narrative floating about the mainstream press is that the developing world is held back by a quagmire of free market fundamentalism. Sure, there are a few exceptions to this narrative, such as Peter Bauer and William Easterly . But pretty much all we hear is a chorus from the likes of Jeffrey Sachs ; that in order for these poor
In what has become a running joke amongst those skeptical of the claim that minimum wage increases have no effect on unemployment, a recent report by the Employment Policies Institute showed that 174 of the 184 co-sponsors of a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour hired unpaid interns. My personal favorite example of this type of
When Christopher Nolan was promoting his previous film Interstellar , he made the casual observation that “Take a field like economics for example. [Unlike physics] you have real material things and it can’t predict anything. It’s always wrong.” There is a lot more truth in that statement than most academic economists would like to admit. Alan Jay
Last month, former Vermont governor Howard Dean announced that “hate speech is not protected by the first amendment.” Specifically, Dean was opposing a proposed speaking engagement for columnist Ann Coulter, whose ideas are apparently so offensive to Dean, that even the most fundamental freedoms cannot be allowed to endure. Dean no doubt thought
Raising the minimum wage has become the cause célèbre for many on the progressive left. Most notably, Seattle has passed a $15 per hour minimum wage . In addition, California lawmakers are trying to pass a state-wide $13 per hour minimum wage and President Obama is supporting the increase of the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 . The
In my previous column , I noted both the fallacy that libertarianism is inherently “atomistic” as well as the scientific fact that while morality — such as the Golden Rule, may be applied universally — human cooperation and empathy are not. We are hemmed in by “Dunbar’s number” which limits the number of social relationships any one person can
One of the most persistent — and fallacious — argument against the libertarian or laissez-faire position is that libertarianism is an “atomistic” and “selfish” philosophy that denies the obvious truth that human beings are a “social species” who long for a strong sense of community. Perhaps David Masciotra’s semi-coherent rant best illustrates
Some myths die hard. The myth of the gender wage gap is one that’s had particularly long legs. Right after winning an Academy Award, Patricia Arquette proclaimed that “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America” to thunderous applause. In her “11 Commandments of Progressivism,”
It’s quite interesting indeed when both progressives and conservatives seem to be nostalgic for those good ol’ days in the 1950s, for different reasons, of course. Conservatives want to go back to the nuclear Leave It to Beaver family and what not while liberals like to talk about those 90-percent tax rates that we owe our prosperity to. Or
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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.