Just when employers were getting less fearful about what President Obama might do next to worsen the business climate, the National Labor Relations Board (now with its first Democratic majority in a decade) announced on December 14 that, under a newly proposed federal rule, private employers will be required to display pro-unionizing posters in
“Middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires,” repeatedly proclaims President Obama, arguing for his proposed $1.5 trillion tax increase over the next 10 years. “That’s pretty straightforward. It’s hard to argue against that.” In fact, Mr. Obama’s statement is anything but straightforward. Seeking to reverse
You knew it was coming. First they came for the cigarettes, then Hank Williams Jr. got knocked off Monday Night Football for being politically incorrect, and now they’re coming for the butter. Denmark, on October 1, put a $1.29-per-pound tax on all foods that hit 2.3 percent in saturated fats. That’s on top of a 25 percent surcharge imposed last
Today’s crop of central planners and big-spending politicians could learn a thing or two about economics from Henry Hazlitt’s classic bestseller, Economics in One Lesson , published in 1946. Common sense doesn’t have an expiration date. “There is no more persistent and influential faith in the world today than faith in government spending,”
The Free Market 14, no. 7 (July 1996) “Forget the minimum wage,” says Nate, a dishwasher and cook’s helper at our restaurant. “It’s taxes that are killing me.” He is a college student by day, washes about 1,000 dishes during the dinner rush, and stuffs and rolls grape leaves until midnight. To retain his services, we pay higher than the minimum
The Free Market 18, no. 1 (January 2000) Jean-Claude Castex is surrounded by miracles, or at least the quest for miracles. As the official feutier, or tender of religious candles, at Lourdes, the spot in France where the Virgin Mary appeared in a grotto to a poor miller’s daughter in the nineteenth century, Castex sees, on average, some 14,000
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.