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 confront the fact that, as labor economist… Read More

Benedict XVI: A LifeBy Peter SeewaldVolume 1: Youth in Nazi Germany to the Second Vatican Council 1927–1965Published in English by Bloomsbury Continuum, London, 2020Translated by Dinah Livingstone Peter Seewald has recently published an extensive biography of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, and the work is a masterpiece which, once begun, cannot be put down. Seewald writes… Read More

The bill’s supporters may talk about how it will give workers the ability to choose to organize at work, but much like the mafia, this bill will ensure that the choice to unionize is one that workers can’t refuse. Original Article: “The PRO Act Is Not Just a Union Handout—It’s an Assault on the Freedom… Read More

Contact Tho Bishop Tho is an assistant editor for the Mises Wire, and can assist with questions from the press. Prior to working for the Mises Institute, he served as Deputy Communications Director for the House Financial Services Committee. His articles have been featured in The Federalist, the Daily Caller, and Business Insider. Let’s block ads! (Why?) Mises… Read More

A line in a recent National Post news story left me aghast: “Economists are nearly unanimous in their support for the $381-billion deficit Ottawa plans to run in 2021.” One of Canada’s more reasonable newspapers, founded by Conrad Black, published the outlandish notion that unprecedented Keynesian deficit spending is plain-vanilla economics. This assertion, no doubt the honest belief… Read More

A money which can be held in only one form, whether digital coin (as in the case of bitcoin), or banknote, or sight deposit, or metallic coin, for example, is crippled. Yet, exclusive digital form has become a huge selling point for the promotors of bitcoin. Original Article: “Bitcoin, Gold, and the Rush to National… Read More

The year 1982 was life changing for me. It also was the year that I met Murray Rothbard and toured what then was East Berlin with him and his wife—and a host of others. And thanks to Rothbard and others in the Austrian school of economics, I was able to understand just why the Communists… Read More

One of the primary justifications given for state provision of a good or service is that it is a “public good,” meaning that it is sufficiently costly to exclude nonpayers from enjoying the good and that one person’s enjoyment of the good doesn’t interfere with anyone else’s. Provision of such goods through voluntary means is… Read More

Contact Lipton Matthews Lipton Matthews is a researcher, business analyst, and contributor to Merion West, The Federalist, American Thinker, Intellectual Takeout, mises.org, and Imaginative Conservative. He may be contacted at lo_matthews@yahoo.com or on Twitter (@matthewslipton). Let’s block ads! (Why?) Mises WireRead More

[These edited extracts, from an interview in the February 1973 issue of Reason magazine, first ran in the June 1999 issue of the Rothbard-Rockwell Report.] Q: Why, in your view, is isolationism an essential tenet of libertarian foreign policy? A: The libertarian position, generally, is to minimize state power as much as possible, down to zero, and isolationism is… Read More

The driving force behind the stakeholder capitalism philosophy is precisely that it creates opportunities for political actors to assert disproportionate control over the economy’s resources. Original Article: “Why “Stakeholder Capitalism” Is a Disaster for Entrepreneurs“ This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack. Let’s block ads! (Why?) Mises WireRead… Read More

In previous articles, I’ve discussed the Great Reset and introduced several ways of understanding the economics of it. The Great Reset can be thought of as neofeudalism, as “corporate socialism,” as “capitalism with Chinese characteristics,” and in terms of “stakeholder capitalism” versus “neoliberalism.” In future installments, I intend to treat the technological (transhumanist) and monetary… Read More