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Excerpted from Chapter 23, Part IV of Mises classic The Theory of Money and Credit (1912).The people of all countries agree that the present state of monetary affairs is unsatisfactory and that a change is highly desirable. However, ideas about the kind of reform...
Why does college cost so much? There are two basic reasons. The first is that people will pay what the colleges charge. The second is that there is little incentive for colleges to reduce the tuition they charge. Those who want the government to provide subsidies to...
Those who argue that the taxpayers should be forced to subsidize people who go to colleges and universities seldom bother to think beyond the notion that education is a Good Thing. Some education is not only a good thing but a great thing. But, like most good things,...
A front-page headline in the New York Times captures much of the economic confusion of our time: "Fewer Options Open to Pay for Costs of College." The whole article is about the increased costs of college, the difficulties parents have in paying those costs, and the...
How to Start Replacing It With Solid Gold
Consumption expenditure is not the main form of spending in the economic system and does not pay the national income or gross domestic product. Most spending in the economic system is in fact concealed under the head of net investment.
The widespread establishment of partial gold clauses is an essential step in the protection of the buying power of creditors. It would also be a major step on the path toward the establishment of sound money.
Credit expansion boosts profits more than does simple inflation because the reduction in interest rates it brings about serves to increase the time lag between the making of expenditures for capital goods and labor and their subsequent appearance as costs in business income statements.
Economic theory does not operate in a vacuum. Institutions, such as the property rights structure, determine how the theory manifests itself. Similarly, the law of gravity isn't repealed when a parachutist floats gently down to earth. The parachute simply affects how...
There are some ideas and feelings that sound plausible but given just a wee bit of thought can be shown to border on lunacy. Let's examine a few. Some U.S. companies have been accused of exploiting Third World workers with poor working conditions and low wages. Say...
Repeal minimum-wage legislation, pro-union legislation, and licensing legislation. That is what will help to eliminate poverty.
The increase in the savings of the economic system as a whole must take the form of an increase in its capital assets, such as business plant, equipment, and inventories.
As more multinational corporations move into a poorer country, the people there not only get additional economic opportunities, they acquire skills and job experience that raise their productivity and earnings potential, even if that outrages the economically illiterate in Hollywood.
Environmentalism thus stands a very strong chance of ultimately reverting to the more traditional socialism of massive government construction and engineering projects.
The principal obstacle in the way of saving and capital accumulation and thus the rise in real wages is government welfare-state spending.
Growing budget deficits are part of the explanation of profits rising relative to wages.
An interesting question in economics is the proper role of statistics. Ludwig von Mises is my favourite economist, yet he held that statistics have no valid role in formulating or validating economic theory. It's interesting to explore his reasons. First, Mises held...
Here's what one reader wrote: "Williams, I can understand how the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and Middle East political uncertainty can jack up gasoline prices. But it's price-gouging for the oil companies to raise the price of all the gasoline already bought and...
George Orwell admonished, "Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious." That's what I want to do -- talk about the obvious, starting with the question: What human motivation leads to the most wonderful things getting done? How about...
One of the beauties of an economy coordinated by price movements is that nobody has to understand it in order for it to work. If vast new iron ore deposits are discovered tomorrow in Timbuktu, 99 percent of the people on this planet may be wholly unaware of it -- and...
There are two fundamental views of economic life which give rise to two systems of economic thought.
The mythical economic claims of beneficial aspects of hurricane destruction.
There are extensive tracts of land, comparable to those in Europe, which are sparsely settled. The United States of America and the British dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and so on, are less heavily populated, in comparison with their...
With TV cameras in tow, Channel 11 stopped at our restaurant last Tuesday to ask the afternoon kitchen crew how it felt about the new $52 occupation tax. Not surprisingly, no one liked it. Also not surprisingly, not much of the half-hour of filming ended up on TV,...
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