From Garet Garrett’s analysis of The New Deal, known today as The Revolution Was and Ex-America : [T]he perfect welfare state must in the end ration the national income, and, when it does that, money comes to be like coupons in a wartime ration book. At first, however, the government must borrow heavily. In order to transfer wealth from the few to
Here is Henry Hazlitt exercising his gift for lucidity to produce a book entitled Economics in One Lesson . If there were such a book this would be it. It deals with those “economic fallacies that are at last so prevalent that they have almost become new orthodoxy,” — to the point that now there is not a major government in the world whose
[Garet Garrett was a great American writer, a hater of war, and a lover of free enterprise and technology. He wrote this essay in 1944. It is published as part of A Time is Born , newly available in PDF for free download.] There was never any absolute necessity for the machine. Life could exist without it, only, of course on a much smaller
Introduction Problem 1: To Capture the Seat of Government Problem 2: To Seize Economic Power Problem 3: To Mobilize by Propaganda the Forces of Hatred Problem 4: To Reconcile and Attach to the Revolution the Two Great Classes Whose Adherence Is Indispensable, Namely, the Industrial Wage Earner and the Farmer, Called in Europe Workers and Peasants
[This article is excerpted from a chapter in The Wild Wheel , originally published in 1953.] The Great Depression had revolutionary political and social consequences, some of them irreversible, some of them still acting with unspent force. It began in 1930 and continued like a nightmare of Prometheus in chains until the nation’s energies were
[Originally published in American Affairs , April 1948.] “Public money is like holy water. Every man helps himself.” ~ Italian proverb As the hungry dollar devours its own purchasing power we may think we are going to find out what happened to the fabulous snake that swallowed itself. But we won’t; and if we did, it would add perhaps nothing to
Ludwig von Mises writes tragedy in the language of political economy. There is in man the very principle of frustration. Once, and perhaps for the first time, he did find the right way. Beginning with the optimistic social philosophy of 18th-century liberalism he discovered the solutions of the free market, free competition, free private
The work cumbersomely entitled, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money , now commonly abbreviated as “The General Theory,” was published in 1936. It was therefore only ten years old when the author, John Maynard Keynes, died last April. Probably no other book has ever produced in so little time a comparable effect. It has tinctured,
[This article is excerpted from American Affairs , Volume XII, Number 2 (April 1950).] NOW from the housetops may be heard voices of fear and warning, saying to the people, “Beware! You are marching toward Socialism. The declivity is there!” The people scoff or stop their ears, and the march continues. Then the voice of despair may be heard
[This essay, which exposes the big-government policies of the Hoover administration, was first published in the Saturday Evening Post , June 25, 1932.] In the minutes of the Chicago City Council, May 12th last, is the perfect example of how commonly we regard public credit. From bad taxation, reckless borrowing and reckless spending, the city of
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.