Last month, news of an E. coli infection that originated in a bag of fresh spinach packaged by Natural Selections Foods, kicked off a nationwide frenzy. More than 180 people became sick from eating spinach, 97 of whom were hospitalized. One person died. The company in question is in total meltdown, and growers around the country are redoubling
[This talk was given at the LRC Health and Wealth Conference in Foster City, California, December 2, 2006.] With the Democrats taking charge in Congress, we will surely hear talk of mandatory national health insurance, more spending for health care for the poor and elderly, and more taxes on individuals and business to pay for the whole scheme.
Well, aren’t we all having lots of fun heaping scorn and derisive laughter on Senator Ted Stevens for his hilariously uninformed commentary on how the internet works? The audio is all over the web, and doesn’t he just sound ridiculous? Actually, I’m not sure that a single elected official in this country, at any level of government, could speak
Sometimes (well, often) you just want to say: down with the state! Consider that an outburst, the kind you feel like making when the lights won’t come on. And the heat wave — and the public utility response — is the news that prompts it. All last week, major parts of Queens, New York, were without electricity following a failure of power that
Nostalgia for a lost but better world is what one feels when following the growing state-pension scandal. The San Diego, California, case is the most famous, but the details are the same in every state: whistle blowers, broken promises, mismanagement, graft, and corruption, followed by toppled politicos, lawsuits, a clamor to raise cash, and
It’s not enough that the Transportation Security Administration wastes hours upon endless hours of time. It’s not enough that they confiscate our Chapstick and toothpaste and claim that it is for our own protection. It’s not enough that we must fork over our ID at five different checkpoints before boarding a plane, and have strangers paid with our
New wage data indicate what you might have suspected. Average wages are not keeping up with the cost of living. This has given rise to claims that we live in the first sustained period of economic growth that has failed to offer a similarly sustained increase in real wages. Indeed, wages have declined in real terms by 2 percent in the last three
In November 2000, Clinton signed a bill passed by Congress that ordered the states to adopt new, more onerous drunk-driving standards or face a loss of highway funds. That’s right: the old highway extortion trick. Sure enough, states passed new, tighter laws against Driving Under the Influence, responding as expected to the feds’ ransom note. The
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.