Al Gore may be dull-witted, and his speech slow and stiff. But despite this pathetic demeanor, Gore is a formidable defender of government. His program to “reinvent” government was a brilliant maneuver to hide a massive increase in government size and power in a guise of phony cuts in government employees and improved government efficiency. Gore
You don’t have to be a member of the Christian Coalition to oppose the adoption of a state lottery. In fact, I believe in the unrestricted right to gamble. Despite this, I oppose the adoption of a state lottery. After an in-depth study of all the evidence on the lottery, I cannot find one positive thing to say about the lottery. The state lottery
A crucial part of a national political campaign involves enlisting economists to endorse the candidates’ plan. Every four years, statements are circulated by the campaigns and economists are urged to sign up. Mises Institute adjunct scholar Mark Thornton, though certainly not a supporter of Gore, would not, as a matter of principle, sign the Bush
The government tells you that your taxes are being cut. What you may not have heard is that you may soon be drafted into an entirely separate tax system that receives very little public attention outside publications for tax accountants. The name of the second tier of tax is the AMT, the alternative minimum tax. If you work too hard, are too
Economists of an Austrian bent just can’t take off their analytical spectacles, even when undertaking simple life activities like driving from here to there. Fortunately, this unusual way of looking at events and institutions yields fascinating results, as with a recent commute that nicely illustrated the universal truth that governments cause
Austerity: When It Works and When It Doesn’t by Alberto Alesina, Carlo Favero, and Francesco Giavazzi Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019, xvi + 245 pp. Mark Thornton (mthornton@mises.org) is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and Book Review Editor at the QJAE. Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics 22, no. 1 (Spring 2019), for full
The Free Market 14, no. 11 (November 1996) Republicans seemed sincere when they argued against a minimum-wage increase. In their rhetoric they were right: it increases unemployment, especially among the poor, by making work illegal. Even the head of Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers denounced the minimum wage—when he was a private
Volume 12, Number 1 (1996) Prohibition, I venture to say, was the last thing in the world the American people expected to have come upon them. “It can never happen” might be our national slogan. Let us wake up, and face conditions as they are.” Like the Prohibition generation of the 1920s, Americans today seem unaware of their long history of
David Beito did a great service for the scholarship of liberty and American history with his rediscovery of the Great Depression-era tax resistance movement. He uncovered evidence of widespread opposition to property taxes across America. However, the anti-tax rebellion declined as quickly as it started, a demise that he attributes to a lack of a
National Public Radio recently broadcast a segment on the concept of the open office. When I went back to my office I planned to listen to the entire segment and when I Googled it, there were multiple hits to NPR segments. One might suspect that NPR has some disgruntled reporters working in the open office format. The open office concept of no
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.