The Free Market 17, no. 4 (April 1999) The Y2K computer bug isn’t like a natural disaster or mass disease. It is a technical problem with a technical fix that can be overcome with work and time. However, and without speculating about the ultimate fallout from the problem, the bug has exposed a very real and deep infraction that has long plagued
The Free Market 17, no. 5 (May 1999) No totalitarian state has tolerated even a modicum of financial privacy. That follows from the premise that citizens should not be granted any privacy at all. After all, they might use it in opposition to the government’s plans, or support themselves apart from the government. In contrast, freedom and
The Free Market 17, no. 6 (June 1999) After the US government attacked Yugoslavia, the first act of the Republicans was to take tax cuts off the table (if they were ever really on it). This symbolic gesture underscores a point: when a war is on, the work of liberty is off. For this reason, everyone concerned about freedom must oppose war. At the
The Free Market 17, no. 7 (July 1999) On the wall outside my office, the gift of Nelson White, is a framed piece of money: a 500 billion dinar note issued by the government of Yugoslavia. It was printed in 1993, when it would buy about a gallon of milk. And that was before the inflation really got bad. By January 1994, the rate would reach 313
The Free Market 17, no. 8 (August 1999) When Janet Yellen, Clinton’s chair of the Council of Economic Advisors, resigned her post, she said it was for purely personal reasons. But according to inside reports, the personal reasons included frustration at having to lie day-in and day-out. No matter what the economic data of the week, she was
The Free Market 17, no. 9 (September 1999) As the bureaucrats pursue their Draconian war on drugs, the Clinton administration is conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry to provide drugs at taxpayer expense. Under the guise of expanding Medicare—already a massive wealth transfer from young to old—prescription drugs will be included among the
The Free Market 17, no. 10 (October 1999) Opinion polls on taxes are the shabbiest of the lot. People are asked questions like: would you rather have Congress cut taxes or provide more essential government services? The results are invariably ambiguous. Reporters then claim that a surprising number of people are pleased with the amount of taxes
The Free Market 17, no. 11 (November 1999) At some point, and nobody knows when, the stock market is going to reverse its climb. It may even collapse. It is interesting to speculate on what kind of political response that would generate. Given the politics of entitlement and the propensity of the Fed to intervene, the picture looks pretty grim.
The Free Market 17, no. 12 (December 1999) Thank goodness this bloody century, the era of communism, national socialism, fascism, and central planning-in short, the century of government worship-is coming to an end. May we use the occasion to re-pledge our allegiance to human freedom, which is the basis of prosperity and civilization itself, and
The Free Market 18, no. 1 (January 2000) “The trouble with socialism,” Oscar Wilde once wrote, “is that it takes too many evenings.” Indeed, the private lives of socialists are highly politicized. They must not be interested in anything-not even their families-other than socialism. The theory must inform every aspect of their lives, which must
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.