Social issues, from abortion to critical race theory to teaching gender identity in elementary schools, dominate our politics and media. Original Article: “Why Social Issues Dominate” This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. 

Propping up congressional deficit spending, juicing equity markets, and constantly recapitalizing commercial banks are the Fed’s true mandates. Original Article: “Inflation, Quick and Dirty” This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. 

Inflation in the US is at forty-year highs, while interest rates on ten-year Treasury notes just hit 3 percent—signaling trouble for home buyers. Truck drivers pay more than $1,000 to fill their rigs with $5 per gallon diesel to deliver your increasingly expensive groceries and Amazon packages. Crime and homelessness skyrocket in large cities, exacerbated …

Russian oligarchs, American pols, and state-connected billionaires are all cut from the same cloth: they didn’t earn, or fully earn, their wealth and position in society. We must withdraw our sanction of these people. Original Article: “The Wrong Elites” This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. 

Rothbard the historian explained so well how the true progressive goal was always to remake America domestically by promoting war. Original Article: “Rothbard on Today’s Progressive War Jingoism” This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. 

“To mount an effective response to the reigning egalitarianism of our age, therefore, it is necessary but scarcely sufficient to demonstrate the absurdity, the anti-scientific nature, the self-contradictory nature, of the egalitarian doctrine, as well as the disastrous consequences of the egalitarian program. All this is well and good. But it misses the essential nature …

Readers of Murray Rothbard’s articles and speeches on war collectivism will immediately recognize the progressive pietist fervor surrounding today’s progressive war jingoism: everywhere is Ukraine! The atavistic need to analogize today’s situation to 1938, with Vladimir Putin as Adolf Hitler and war skeptics as Neville Chamberlain at Munich, is proof of this. The lessons of …

Economics is about human action and choice within the context of scarcity. The problem facing economists is how to understand and explain human betterment, which is another way of saying production. The critical question, posed correctly by economist Per Bylund, starts with scarcity as the default point for understanding purposive human behavior. Antieconomics, by contrast, …

It is time to get back to normal life, and that starts with visible human faces. Original Article: “Unmask America” This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.

Enough is enough. It is time to stop wearing masks, or at the very least to eliminate mask mandates in all settings.  This is especially urgent for children in schools and universities, who suffer the effects of masks for long hours each day despite being at exceedingly low risk for death or serious illness from covid. We have …

To kick off the New Year, Jeff recently had the opportunity to address a Discord channel dedicated to Austrian Economics. His talk focused on the state of economics generally, whether the profession is serving society, how economists failed us throughout the Covid hysteria, and especially the health and relevance of the Austrian school. This is …

You do not defend a world that is already lost. When was it lost? That you cannot say precisely. It is a point for the revolutionary historian to ponder. We know only that it was surrendered peacefully, without a struggle, almost unawares. There was no day, no hour, no celebration of the event—and yet definitely, …

Recorded in Lake Jackson, Texas, on December 4, 2021. Ron Paul’s two campaigns for president (2008 and 2012) were watershed moments for liberty-minded people around the world. The “Ron Paul Revolution”—centered around his undiluted message of peace, property, and markets—changed the way millions thought about the American empire and the American financial system. Dr. Paul’s …

In a decent society, real justice is specific and not general. In criminal matters especially, justice should be temporal and rooted in the facts of the instant case. Greater societal concerns, along with the identity of defendant and victims (sex, race, religion, notoriety, social or economic status, etc.), simply should not be considered. This is precisely why we sequester …

We wrap up our look at Murray Rothbard’s sprawling two volume An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought with Dr. Joe Salerno, Rothbard’s friend and colleague. This show covers the second volume exclusively, starting with the Frenchman JB Say and working through Ricardo, the British Currency School, John Stuart Mill, and finally Karl Marx. Salerno has penetrating insights about all of these thinkers, from Say’s understanding of production to Ricardo’s erroneous systemization of Adam Smith. He also has great background regarding Mises and the Currency School vs. Banking School debate, on free banking and full reserve banking, and on Mill’s deep misconception of money. The show ends with a thorough look at Rothbard’s treatment of Marx over more than 100 pages:

1930, Columbia professor Karl Llewellyn published The Bramble Bush, his famous tract on how to think about and study law. Llewellyn urged readers to consider both law and custom when seeking to understand a society, to recognize the difference between the black letter legal codes and the day to day practices of state officials and citizens. Where there was no sanction, the author instructed, there was no law. In other words, we should focus on the substance of things at least as much as we focus on the form. This is an important lesson for how we view the United States today, with an eye toward what is actually happening on the ground among people and institutions, rather than legal formalisms.
A few years ago, on a panel discussion at an event in

1930, Columbia professor Karl Llewellyn published The Bramble Bush, his famous tract on how to think about and study law. Llewellyn urged readers to consider both law and custom when seeking to understand a society, to recognize the difference between the black letter legal codes and the day to day practices of state officials and citizens. …

Some of you may know the name Alex Berenson, the former New York Times journalist who comes from a left-liberal background. He has been absolutely fearless and tireless on Twitter over the past eighteen months, documenting the overreach and folly of covid policy—and the mixed reality behind official assurances on everything from social distancing to masks to vaccine …

After more than a year of unprecedented state intervention in our private lives, have Americans accepted a grim “new normal”? Recorded in Colorado Springs on August 21, 2021. Special thanks to William Brennan for sponsoring this event.

Jack Dorsey, Vipassanā meditation practitioner and billionaire CEO of Twitter, is known for cultivating an eclectic image as a guru and deep thinker. He is also well-known as a supporter of bitcoin, having a personal stake and speaking at conferences to dedicated hodlers. But over this past weekend he used his sizable Twitter account (5.6 …

Jeff Deist hosts a solo show to discuss one of his favorite novels from childhood, All Quiet on the Western Front. Its young protagonist Paul Bäumer, barely out of adolescence, narrates the horrors of trench warfare from the perspective only a grunt soldier can provide. Bäumer and his mates lose their innocence, along with various …

The self-styled investigative journalism outlet ProPublica recently published private IRS tax information—presumably embarrassing private tax information—for a host of ultrawealthy and famous Americans. I say “self-styled” because the organization claims a pretty lofty and self-important mission to use the “moral force” of journalism on behalf of the public interest against abuses of power. But does this apply to state power, such as when a federal agency employee illegally leaks sensitive material to media? And why is it presumed to be in the public’s interest to have rich billionaires pay more in taxes? Maybe we’d rather have them investing in their companies, or at least buying megayachts and Gulfstream jets, rather than sending more resources to

[This article is excerpted from a talk given June 17, 2021, at the Mises Institute’s Medical Freedom Summit in Salem, New Hampshire.]
Ladies and gentlemen, why are we here today?
First, in a certain sense medicine in America is broken. Doctors and patients are unhappy, the quality of care deteriorates, and costs keep increasing. Even before covid, US life expectancy declined three years running. Even before covid, too many Americans were sick, depressed, fat, and unhappy with their physical and mental health. I wonder if we’ll ever have accurate data about undiagnosed and untreated cancer and other serious illness as a result of the hospital and clinic lockdown. It strikes me this is the kind of information we might want before we consider another

[This article is excerpted from a talk given June 17, 2021, at the Mises Institute’s Medical Freedom Summit in Salem, New Hampshire.] Ladies and gentlemen, why are we here today? First, in a certain sense medicine in America is broken. Doctors and patients are unhappy, the quality of care deteriorates, and costs keep increasing. Even …

Federal income taxes are almost entirely about control and not revenue. The byzantine rules and selective enforcement are perfectly designed to keep ordinary people with limited means in mortal fear of the IRS. Original Article: “The Real Tax Scandal​” This Audio Mises Wire is generously sponsored by Christopher Condon. Narrated by Michael Stack.

A new world of medical entrepreneurship is growing. Concierge and cash-only practices, walk-in cash clinics, medical tourism, and cost-sharing plans are just a few of the ways free-market approaches are changing the landscape. Our expert speakers will discuss several of these developments, and more. Recorded in Salem, New Hampshire, on June 17, 2021.

Matt Asher is an investor, writer, and host of The Filter podcast. He has a background in journalism and statistics. Matt Asher: My guest today on The Filter is Jeff Deist. Jeff is president of the Mises Institute, where he serves as a writer, public speaker, and advocate for property, markets, and civil society. He …

Twenty twenty was the year college changed forever. How many US universities have been mortally wounded? Covid was the pretense. But the writing was on the wall for decades. Skyrocketing tuition. Useless majors and degrees. Leftist ideologues masquerading as professors. Woke curricula instead of rigor and truth. Many students leave with tens or even hundreds …

The recent spate of bombing violence in Israel’s West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza demonstrates the enduring attachment both Israelis and Palestinians have to physical land in the country. Both sides make claims—legal, moral, and political—to land within Israel, from the southernmost tip of Gaza to the northernmost tip of the Golan Heights. This ongoing …

Is Babbittry alive and well in twenty-first-century America? George F. Babbitt is novelist Sinclair Lewis’s protagonist in the novel of the same name. Babbitt is a real estate man, which is to say a salesman, but the newfangled 1920s term is “Realtor™.” Incurious, smug, self-satisfied, and utterly predictable, Babbitt is well pleased with his life in …