Mises Institute

• A Tale of Two “Deflationary” Booms – The Gilded Age vs. Today
  By: Brendan Brown The forces of globalization during the past two decades have been stronger than at any time since the era of “the Great Deflation” which started in the aftermaths of the US Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, and continued through the 1880s. During teh earlier period, the US economy enjoyed record growth in […]
• Do Seasonal Adjustments Help Identify Business Cycles?
  By: Frank Shostak Various statistics that governments produce on a regular basis carry the label "seasonally adjusted". What is the meaning of this label? According to popular thinking the data that is observed over time (labelled as time series) is determined by four factors, which are:The trend factorThe cyclical factorThe seasonal factorThe irregular factorIt is […]
• How Welfare States Make Us Less Civilized
  By: Per Bylund Throughout history, the state has justified itself on the grounds that it is necessary to protect us from others whose habits and beliefs — we are meant to believe — are dangerous. For millennia, this fiction was easy to maintain because most people interacted so little with people outside their nearly autarkic […]
• Privatize the Public Monuments
  By: Ryan McMaken When I was a student at the University of Colorado, I regularly walked by the Dalton Trumbo memorial fountain which was named after the communist Stalin-sympathizing novelist and screenwriter. Once upon a time, the fountain had been simply known as "the fountain," but around 25 years ago, it was unnecessarily renamed after a controversial person. The reason for the renaming was […]
• The Attack on Marijuana During the 1930s
  By: Chris Calton How did Americans fall for the government's reefer madness? Chris Calton explains how junk science, overt racism, and myths of bloodthirsty soldiers all played a role in the criminalization of marijuana in America.