In my industrial organization course, I discuss the economic theory of the firm. It is important in that there are many ways real world firms don’t correspond to the way they are presented in microeconomics models. When dealing with differences between the assumptions or implications of a microeconomic model or analysis and the real world, I have
As someone who teaches public finance (better termed the economics of government), I can’t count how many times I have heard politicians promise “comprehensive” reforms to some major problem. But what such efforts actually produce is always different from what is promised, because such achievements are beyond government’s competence. The more
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. Democrats are again pushing to increase the federal minimum wage, this time roughly doubling it to $15 per hour. And as with every such push, that has involved invoking “rosy scenario” sales pitches about how low-wage workers will be big winners. However, such “help the poor” claims must
Listen to the Audio Mises Wire version of this article. Taxes have a long reign near the top of discussion topics. But it can be striking how much nonsense and confusion is both advanced and accepted about taxation. A good way to understand some of the basics of taxation better is by analogy to the game of dodgeball. In the game of tax
Women’s History Month celebrates many who have made incredible contributions. But I have never seen a woman who “could literally save the world” by how she advanced liberty honored during it. It is time to rectify that omission and recognize Isabel Paterson. Her most notable contribution came in 1943, when, according to David T. Beito ,
My 2016 book, Lines of Liberty , brought together the words of many who have been most important in the defense of liberty over the years. But it only included those who had already passed on. Since, then, a few stalwarts of liberty have died. Tibor Machan may have been the first, only a couple months after I completed my book. Since his insights
“You are hitting the nail with too many hammers.” I can still remember Bob Clower, my dissertation chairman at the time, saying that to me after reading my most recent work. It was directed at the fact that I had shown problems with a particular competing argument “six ways from Sunday.” That is, It was overkill. Of course, he didn’t note that his
Henry Grady Weaver worked through many jobs on the way to becoming director of customer research for General Motors, which landed him on the November 14, 1938 Time cover. But virtually no one remembers that. Now he is best known for his short 1947 book , The Mainspring of Human Progress , that the Ludwig von Mises Institute’s website called
President Biden has just appointed a commission to study Supreme Court reform. However, I noticed that no one seems to be talking about reform to mean “re-form to better reflect the Constitution than under current precedents and interpretation,” reflected in the notable paucity of defenders of the Constitution as understood at the time it was
No one must profit from the misfortune of others. I have heard and read such assertions many times, virtually any time there is an emergency or disaster anywhere, or whenever some good involved is considered by someone as essential or something they “need.” That is why, when I found it at the head of Leonard Read’s article “To Alleviate
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.