The Washington Post recently blared the headline: “Majority of Millennials Now Reject Capitalism, Poll Shows.” I suspect, perhaps unfairly, that this is a matter of some pleasure for the Post’s editorial board. But if you actually read the article, a different picture emerges. In fact, 42 percent of the millennials polled say they support capitalism. […]
Fans of increased government intervention in the economy often like to justify their position by pointing to the success of the moon landing. “If we can put a man on the moon,” the refrain goes, “we can surely rebuild our crumbling infrastructure (or provide everyone with healthcare, etc.).” There’s no question the moon landing was […]
Editor’s Note: This is an open letter from Prof. Howard Baetjer to a friend who commented on one of his Facebook posts about minimum wage laws. Baetjer and his friend, Adam, look at the minimum wage issue from very different perspectives, so Baetjer wrote an open letter. What do you think about the issue? Check […]
“If we look at the history of the world, a huge fraction of the improvements in standard of living has come because private businesses have created new products, have given people jobs, have generated profits that raise people out of poverty and allow them to live fruitful and productive lives with reasonable standards of living.” […]
Wouldn’t it be great if seeing a doctor was as quick and as easy as calling an Uber? That’s the question that Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Adam Thierer asks in the new Learn Liberty video on Permissionless Innovation. This concept states that people should be allowed to innovate and make products that improve our […]
From The Atlantic’s Marian Tupy: Let us start at the well of the socialist renewal, the Vermont senator. Sanders, as everyone knows, calls himself a “democratic socialist.” The word “democratic” is fundamental here, because historically socialism has not, typically, come about as a result of free and fair elections. In most socialist countries, like the […]
Now that we’ve had eight years to digest the most recent financial crisis, the accepted narrative puts the blame squarely on the private banking sector. The conventional wisdom goes that the greedy banksters on Wall Street – not regulated thoroughly enough – took some risky bets on sub-prime mortgages and collapsed the housing market. It’s […]
The argument no proponent of central planning has ever been able to overcome; if humans can’t be trusted with freedom, how can they be trusted with power?
This quote was taken from Ludwig von Mises’s work Planning for Freedom: Let the Market System Work, which is a collection of essays and addresses on inflation and government intervention in the economy. In this work, as in others, von Mises maintains that government interventions in monetary and commercial affairs are destructive to the economy, regardless […]
Without economic freedom, we cannot exercise our other freedoms. The freedom to speak is meaningless if the government prevents us from traveling from our homes or paying for a phone call. The freedom to write is meaningless if the government prevents us from selling newspapers. The freedom to worship is meaningless if the government forces […]