As the U.S. Congress continues to ignore the need for real fiscal discipline, kicking the can down the road again with yet another continuing resolution (CR), it is worth revisiting what two of the greats of the Austrian School had to say regarding the question of the...
Economics
‘Grocery Store Communism’
by John Weeks | Apr 16, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles
Zohran Mamdani is running for Mayor of New York City to “lower the cost of living for working class New Yorkers,” according to his campaign website. He has promised to freeze the cost of rent “stabilized” apartments, put the “worst landlords” out of business, create...
Capitalism Unveiled: A Beginner’s Guide to the Free Market
by Keith Knight | Apr 15, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles
Editor's note: This article is taken from managing editor Keith Knight's opening statement for a recent ZeroHedge debate. To clarify, when I say communism, I'm referring to the abolition of private property and voluntary contracts. Socialism is most accurately...

TGIF: The Objectively Invaluable Menger
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 11, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Many people are uneasy with the free market. I think that's because they subscribe, implicitly if not explicitly, to the labor theory of value. Workers, people lament, seem not to reap the full and just reward for their labors. Belief in the labor theory puts...

Trump’s Tariffs Are Economic Folly, Top to Bottom
by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Apr 8, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles
On April 2, 2025, President Donald Trump stood in the White House Rose Garden to declare “Liberation Day”—a sweeping new tariff initiative aimed at reducing the U.S. trade deficit and revitalizing domestic manufacturing. The policy introduces a 10% blanket tariff on...

TGIF: The Great Carl Menger
by Sheldon Richman | Apr 4, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
There can be no doubt among competent historians that if ... the Austrian School has occupied an almost unique position in the development of economic science, this is entirely due to the foundations laid by this one man.... [I]ts fundamental ideas belong fully and...

TGIF: “Liberalism and Capitalism”
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 28, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Ludwig von Mises's 1927 path-breaking work in political theory speaks to the current generations. In section 5 of his introduction to Liberalism: The Classical Tradition, Mises sounds impeccably relevant in describing how the opponents of liberalism and the market...
TGIF: The Income Stagnation Myth
by Sheldon Richman | Mar 21, 2025 | Economics, Featured Articles, Justice, Libertarianism, Politics, Sheldon Richman, TGIF
Many people, including some free-market advocates, think Americans are materially worse off today than they were in the 1970s. Some subscribers to that view blame globalization, that is, free trade in goods, which means in labor services. By any reasonable measure,...