The Fascinating World of Economics

This is my favorite book by my favorite author. He dissects every known form of socialism up to the date of publication (1922). His words have stood the test of time and there are very few, if any really new ideas on the subject since, that are not actually described (if not by the same names) and torn apart in this book. This is the book that turned the Nobel Prize winning economist Friedrich von Hayek away from the social democracy ideology, held before he read it!But most importantly, Mises demonstrated conclusively how socialism is not a rational system and has to fail, of its own inconsistencies.The scope is magisterial: covering everything from love and sex under socialism and capitalism, to the details of national economic planning. Democratic Socialism, Christian Socialism, Syndicalism, Marxism, National Socialism, Monopolies, the concentration of Capital, Trade Unionism, Income Inequality, Interventionism, all the key concepts are presented fairly, clearly and persuasively.You will be amazed at how relevant and thoroughly readable this book is today, almost 100 years after it first appeared.The super-popular (and well known in his day - author of best selling "The Worldly Philosophers" and many other books) socialist American economist Robert Heilbroner said not long after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and most of the communist world in 1989, that "of course Mises was right." That's an incredibly ironic "of course," since Heilbroner made his name pushing various types of socialism during his long academic and best selling writing career.The prominent (in Europe) Polish socialist (1920s-30s) Oscar Lange said socialists should erect a statue to Mises, for his pointing out a critical flaw in socialism. He was only partially being facetious.If even honest socialists such as these admit Mises was right, shouldn't you know what he said about socialism?Another huge benefit to reading this book is that Mises does not contend himself with only being critical of Socialism. No, not at all. He makes the full case for a rigorous liberal society based on a truly free market economy with property rights as the key.This book is one of the all-time greatest achievements of the human mind. Considering this, it is also not all that difficult to read. I thought virtually every part fascinating, and was incredibly enriched by reading it all, which I have done several times since I discovered it about 1976. Considering how popular socialism is becoming these days (2019), despite over 100 years of evidence of how destructive to mankind this ideology and economic system is, wouldn't perhaps finding out what it is really all about, in all its manifest forms be a wise move?Enjoy!

The application of economics to major contemporary real world problems--housing, medical care, discrimination, the economic development of nations--is the theme of this new book that tackles these and other issues head on in plain language, as distinguished from the usual jargon of economists. It examines economic policies not simply in terms of their immediate effects but also in terms of their later repercussions, which are often very different and longer lasting. The interplay of politics with economics is another theme of Applied Economics, whose examples are drawn from experiences around the world, showing how similar incentives and constraints tend to produce similar outcomes among very disparate peoples and cultures.

In recent years, libertarian impulses have increasingly influenced national and economic debates, from welfare reform to efforts to curtail affirmative action. Murray N. Rothbard's classic The Ethics of Liberty stands as one of the most rigorous and philosophically sophisticated expositions of the libertarian political position.What distinguishes Rothbard's book is the manner in which it roots the case for freedom in the concept of natural rights and applies it to a host of practical problems. An economist by profession, Rothbard here proves himself equally at home with philosophy. And while his conclusions are radical--that a social order that strictly adheres to the rights of private property must exclude the institutionalized violence inherent in the state--his applications of libertarian principles prove surprisingly practical for a host of social dilemmas, solutions to which have eluded alternative traditions.The Ethics of Liberty authoritatively established the anarcho-capitalist economic system as the most viable and the only principled option for a social order based on freedom. This edition is newly indexed and includes a new introduction that takes special note of the Robert Nozick-Rothbard controversies.

Thomas Sowell's provocative critique of liberalism's failures The Vision of the Anointed is a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in education, crime, family disintegration, and other social pathology. In this book, "politically correct" theory is repeatedly confronted with facts -- and sharp contradictions between the two are explained in terms of a whole set of self-congratulatory assumptions held by political and intellectual elites. These elites -- the anointed -- often consider themselves "thinking people," but much of what they call thinking turns out, on examination, to be rhetorical assertion, followed by evasions of mounting evidence against those assertions.

In \ The Anti-capitalistic Mentality,\ the respected economist Ludwig von Mises plainly explains the causes of the irrational fear and hatred many intellectuals and others feel for capitalism. In five concise chapters, he traces the causation of the misunderstandings and resultant fears that cause resistance to economic development and social change. He enumerates and rebuts the economic arguments against and the psychological and social objections to economic freedom in the form of capitalism. Written during the heyday of twentieth-century socialism, this work provides the reader with lucid and compelling insights into human reactions to capitalism.Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) was the leading spokesman of the Austrian School of Economics throughout most of the twentieth century. He earned his doctorate in law and economics from the University of Vienna in 1906. In 1926, Mises founded the Austrian Institute for Business Cycle Research. From 1909 to 1934, he was an economist for the Vienna Chamber of Commerce. Before the Anschluss, in 1934 Mises left for Geneva, where he was a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies until 1940, when he emigrated to New York City. From 1948 to 1969, he was a visiting professor at New York University.Bettina Bien Greaves is a former resident scholar, trustee, and longtime staff member of the Foundation for Economic Education. She has written and lectured extensively on topics of free market economics. Her articles have appeared in such journals as Human Events, Reason, and The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. A student of Mises, Greaves has become an expert on his work in particular and that of the Austrian School of economics in general. She has translated several Mises monographs, compiled an annotated bibliography of his work, and edited collections of papers by Mises and other members of the Austrian School.

With a new preface by the author, this reissue of Thomas Sowell's classic study of decision making updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Annointed, Sowell, one of America's most celebrated public intellectuals, describes in concrete detail how knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout modern society. He warns that society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand knowledge and decision making—a gap that threatens not only our economic and political efficiency, but our very freedom because actual knowledge gets replaced by assumptions based on an abstract and elitist social vision f what ought to be.Knowledge and Decisions, a winner of the 1980 Law and Economics Center Prize, was heralded as a ”landmark work” and selected for this prize ”because of its cogent contribution to our understanding of the differences between the market process and the process of government.” In announcing the award, the center acclaimed Sowell, whose ”contribution to our understanding of the process of regulation alone would make the book important, but in reemphasizing the diversity and efficiency that the market makes possible, [his] work goes deeper and becomes even more significant.”

This gives a succinct account of Rothbard’s view of the state. Following Franz Oppenheimer and Albert Jay Nock, Rothbard regards the state as a predatory entity. It does not produce anything but rather steals resources from those engaged in production. In applying this view to American history, Rothbard makes use of the work of John C. Calhoun.How can an organization of this type sustain itself? It must engage in propaganda to induce popular support for its policies. Court intellectuals play a key role here, and Rothbard cites as an example of ideological mystification the work of the influential legal theorist Charles Black, Jr., on the way the Supreme Court has become a revered institution.

Economic Facts and Fallacies exposes some of the most popular fallacies about economic issues-and does so in a lively manner and without requiring any prior knowledge of economics by the reader. These include many beliefs widely disseminated in the media and by politicians, such as mistaken ideas about urban problems, income differences, male-female economic differences, as well as economics fallacies about academia, about race, and about Third World countries. One of the themes of Economic Facts and Fallacies is that fallacies are not simply crazy ideas but in fact have a certain plausibility that gives them their staying power-and makes careful examination of their flaws both necessary and important, as well as sometimes humorous. Written in the easy-to-follow style of the author's Basic Economics, this latest book is able to go into greater depth, with real world examples, on specific issues.

The Mises Institute is pleased to present this very beautiful hardbound edition of Rothbard's most famous monetary essay--the one that has influenced two generations of economists, investors, and business professionals. The Mises Institute has united this book with its natural complement: a detailed reform proposal for a 100 percent gold dollar. The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar was written a decade before the last vestiges of the gold standard were abolished. His unique plan for making the dollar sound again still holds up. Some people have said: Rothbard tells us what is wrong with money but not what to do about it. Well, by adding this essay, the problem and the answer are united in a comprehensive whole. After presenting the basics of money and banking theory, he traces the decline of the dollar from the 18th century to the present, and provides lucid critiques of central banking, New Deal monetary policy, Nixonian fiat money, and fixed exchange rates. He also provides a blueprint for a return to a 100 percent reserve gold standard. The book made huge theoretical advances. He was the first to prove that the government, and only the government, can destroy money on a mass scale, and he showed exactly how they go about this dirty deed. But just as importantly, it is beautifully written. He tells a thrilling story because he loves the subject so much. The passion that Murray feels for the topic comes through in the prose and transfers to the reader. Readers become excited about the subject, and tell others. Students tell professors. Some, like the great Ron Paul of Texas, have even run for political office after having read it. Rothbard shows precisely how banks create money out of thin air and how the central bank, backed by government power, allows them to get away with it. He shows how exchange rates and interest rates would work in a true free market. When it comes to describing the end of the gold standard, he is not content to describe the big trends. He names names and ferrets out all the interest groups involved. Since Rothbard's death, scholars have worked to assess his legacy, and many of them agree that this little book is one of his most important. Though it has sometimes been inauspiciously packaged and is surprisingly short, its argument took huge strides toward explaining that it is impossible to understand public affairs in our time without understanding money and its destruction.

LARGE PRINT EDITION! More at LargePrintLiberty.com When this gem first appeared in 1963, it took the form of a small paperback designed for mass distribution. We've conjured up that spirit again with this special edition of Rothbard's primer on money and government. Innumerable economists, investors, commentators, and authors have learned from this book through the decades. After fifty years, it remains the best book in print on the topic, a real manifesto of sound money. Rothbard boils down the Austrian theory to its essentials. The book also made huge theoretical advances. Rothbard was the first to prove that the government, and only the government, can destroy money on a mass scale, and he showed exactly how they go about this dirty deed. But just as importantly, it is beautifully written. He tells a thrilling story because he loves the subject so much. The passion that Murray feels for the topic comes through in the prose and transfers to the reader. Readers become excited about the subject, and tell others. Students tell professors. Some, like the great Ron Paul of Texas, have even run for political office after having read it. Rothbard shows precisely how banks create money out of thin air and how the central bank, backed by government power, allows them to get away with it. He shows how exchange rates and interest rates would work in a true free market. When it comes to describing the end of the gold standard, he is not content to describe the big trends. He names names and ferrets out all the interest groups involved. Since Rothbard's death, scholars have worked to assess his legacy, and many of them agree that this little book is one of his most important. Though it has sometimes been inauspiciously packaged and is surprisingly short, its argument took huge strides toward explaining that it is impossible to understand public affairs in our time without understanding money and its destruction.

Tens of millions of Americans, from Generation X-ers to baby boomers and beyond, are rediscovering libertarianism, a visionary alternative to the tired party orthodoxies of left and right. In 1995 a Gallup poll found that 52 percent of Americans said "the federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens." Later that year, The Wall Street Journal concurred, saying: "Because of their growing disdain for government, more and more Americans appear to be drifting—often unwittingly—toward a libertarian philosophy." Libertarianism is hardly new, but its framework for liberty under law and economic progress makes it especially suited for the dynamic new era we are now entering. In the United States, the bureaucratic leviathan is newly threatened by a resurgence of the libertarian ideas upon which the country was founded. We are witnessing a breakdown of all the cherished beliefs of the welfare-warfare state. Americans have seen the failure of big government. Now, in the 1990s, we are ready to apply the lessons of this century to make the next one the century not of the state but of the free individual. David Boaz presents the essential guidebook to the libertarian perspective, detailing its roots, central tenets, solutions to contemporary policy dilemmas, and future in American politics. He confronts head-on the tough questions frequently posed to libertarians: What about inequality? Who protects the environment? What ties people together if they are essentially self-interested? A concluding section, "Are You a Libertarian?" gives readers a chance to explore the substance of their own beliefs. Libertarianism is must reading for understanding one of the most exciting and hopeful movements of our time.

The second edition of the fun and fascinating guide to the main ideas of the Austrian School of economics, written in sparkling prose especially for the non-economist. Gene Callahan shows that good economics isn't about government planning or statistical models. It's about human beings and the choices they make in the real world. This may be the most important book of its kind since Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. Though written for the beginner, it has been justly praised by scholars too, including Israel Kirzner, Walter Block, and Peter Boettke.

When this "book" came in the mail, I was disappointed that it was 13 pages of text. A couple of hours later I saw that those 13 pages made up one of the most important defences of tax cuts I have ever read.I had often heard critics of President Reagan call his policy "trickle down" economics. Sowell explains that this is setting up a straw man. By calling it trickle down, they avoid addressing the issue. The desire of those who call for "tax cuts for the rich" are attacked for a desire to see higher income taxpayers retain more of their wealth, which will, presumably, trickle down to others. That is not, however, the intention or even the result of those who call for tax cuts. On the contrary, lower tax rates for the rich was seen as a means to increase their taxes, and reduce the share of the burden of taxation for the lower income taxpayers. Cutting rates in taxation was seen as a means to effect behavioral changes of the wealthy that can change the total output of the economy.The famed "robber baron" and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon called for congress to end "the grotesque" and "evil" tax exemptions for municipal bonds. He pointed out that while the value of these breaks was "relatively worthless" to low income taxpayers, they were used by the wealthy to move their money out of reach of the taxman. The result is to have "higher taxes on all the rest in order to make up the resulting deficiency in the revenues." When Congress refused for political reasons, Secretary Mellon worked to lower tax rates for all.Of course if a person is paying 70% of $100,000 he is going to receive more than someone making a couple of thousand dollars, even though the rates were cut by a higher rate for the less well off. But the point is, few were paying 70%. In 1921 the tax rate on people making over $100,000 was 73%, and the federal government took in about $700,000,000, 30% of which was paid by those $100,000 earners. By 1929 after the rate was cut to 24%, the federal government was collecting over $1 billion in income taxes, 65% of the revenue coming from the same people. This was no accident... under the increasing tax rates imposed during WWI, the number of people reporting $300,000 + income declined from over 1000 in 1916 to less than 300 in 1921... not because people were becoming poorer. Mellon pointed out that investments in tax-exempt securities tripled during the decade.President Coolidge also emphasized this rationale, saying, "When the taxation of large incomes is approached...the problem is to find a rate which will produce the largest returns. Experience does not show that the higher rate produces the larger revenue.... I agree perfectly with those who wish to relieve the small taxpayer by getting the largest possible contribution from the people with large incomes. But if the rates on large incomes are so high that they disappear, the small taxpayer will be left to bear the entire burden."This opinion of Coolidge and Mellon was shared by not only John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, but was also stated by John Maynard Keynes, and even earlier by President Woodrow Wilson and two of his treasury secretaries.President Wilson claimed that high tax rates were "destructive of business activity and productive of waste and inefficiency. There is a point at which in peace times... [high] taxes discourage energy, remove the incentive to new enterprise, encourage extravagant expenditures, and produce industrial stagnation with consequent unemployment and other attendant evils."Treasury Secretary Carter Glass has said that a high rate of taxation "tends to withdraw the capital of very rich men from the development of new enterprises and place it at the disposal of State and municipal governments upon terms so easy to them... as to stimulate wasteful and nonproductive expenditure by State and municipal governments."Opponents then and now, mischaracterized the motives of those who called for tax cuts and results of such cuts. Senators Robert La Follette and Burton K. Wheeler claimed the Mellon tax plan was "a master effort of the special privilege mind...[to] tax the poor and relieve the rich."Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, claimed that Mellon inconsistently called for a balanced budget and paying off the national debt while at the same time seeking tax rate reduction. In reality the debt was reduced from $24 billion in 1921 to under $18 billion in 1928. A widely used textbook claims that "Mellon's spare-the-rich policies...shifted much of the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle-income groups." And yet another textbook claimed that Mellon believed that the burden of taxes should be placed on lower-income earners. It continues, a "share of the tax-free profits of the rich, Mellon reassured the country, would ultimately trickle down to the middle- and lower- income groups in the form of salaries and wages."What Mellon actually said wash that tax policy "must lessen, so far as possible, the burden of taxation on those least able to bear it." In addition to fighting for the elimination of tax-friendly instruments used by the wealthy, and lowering the tax rates, to ultimately increase the proportion of federal revenue paid by the wealthy, he also called for eliminating federal taxes on movie tickets, because these taxes were paid by "the great bulk of the people whose main source of recreation is attending the movies in the neighborhood of their homes." Mellon, Reagan, Bush Sr., Coolidge basically were motivated to do the exact opposite of what they are often charged with.

The Mystery of Banking by Murray N. Rothbard. Austrians have made pretty much all of their books free, which is part of why their ideas are far-reaching.This book reads like a well-written textbook and has basically three parts:1) A primer on supply and demand for money. (Those are parts I quoted from in my previous post).2) An explanation of how fractional reserve banking works.3) A history of banking in the U.K. and U.S., with some prescriptions to how an ideal Rothbardian system would work.While Von Mises and Rothbard build and develop from much earlier monetarists, they reach radically different conclusions from them: Any increase in the overall price level is evil. Fractional reserve banking is immoral because it creates something out of nothing. Our modern banking system is built to create inflation to enrich some at the expense of others. Only by returning to a gold standard and eliminating our central bank and all fractional reserve banking can we achieve a completely stable business cycle (utopia with no involuntary unemployment).Except for these ideas, parts 1 & 2 are similar to any textbook on Money and Banking, or a Principles of Macro text. Part 3 is very jaded, there is a lot of history that Rothbard omits or reinterprets. For example, there was a lot more going into the Panic of 1873 for the U.S. than Jay Cooke's bubble bursting-- the crisis started in Europe, which doesn't get mentioned. That said, there are a lot of interesting facts I was unaware of. I also liked having a Money & Banking text that didn't deal with interest rates at all, everything was in terms of supply and demand for money. That monetarist bent is badly needed in today's world focusing on a mythical "zero bound."The book really illustrated for me the quixotic nature of the Austrian cause. Since coinage was invented, the makers of those coins have been debasing them in order to profit or inflate away debt. Since people have gotten used to calling their currency the "pound," "dollar," etc. instead of it just being "gold," people don't notice the debasement. But it would take a radical departure from thousands of years of human nature to move people away from this problem, even if currency was "denationalized."Rothbard compares the fixing of a price of gold as the same as a government determining uniform weights and measures -- a centimeter is the same everywhere. But the value of a centimeter never changes whereas gold-- being a commodity-- sees its value change with supply and demand, which then changes the value of any currency whose price is fixed to it. The Austrians seemingly ignore this. For example, the late 1800s period in the U.S. the population was growing, output was increasing, but gold supplies were not growing so much so the value of gold rose and prices fell. Rothbard would say this is a naturally good thing, lower prices mean people can afford to buy more. But if you're a farmer who has fixed obligations -- contracted workers, a loan from a bank, etc. lower prices means it's much harder to stay in business and not default. (Hence we had a bimetallic inflationist political movement as a result.) Rothbard completely ignores this.These fluctuations in the value of gold can happen suddenly and unexpectedly. Given so much of the (correct) emphasis that I see Von Mises placing on expectations of entrepreneurs, I find Rothbard's position pretty problematic. As mentioned in my previous post, Rothbard and Mises acknowledge that prices are often sticky, but have a one-size-fits-all explanation for this that doesn't actually fit everywhere. All weight is put on the evil of prices inflation, no weight is put on the harmful effects of deflation.I now see the Austrians as on par with the hard-core left-wing Communists who want to issue in a utopia that is impossible due to human nature. The idea that simply by moving to a 100% reserve gold system and moving to anarcho-capitalism will solve all of our ills and make everyone purely rational yet benevolent is pure nonsense. It's odd to me that as such an astute student of history, Rothbard doesn't see the continual "Road to Serfdom"-like cycle that all civilizations have ridden since the Fall of Man.In the end, there is an Appendix where Rothbard absolutely rips Lawrence White, also an Austrian, for what Rothbard sees as an incorrect interpretation of the history of free banking. Austrians, like Keynesians, have a good reputation for trying to destroy and humiliate those they don't like.George Selgin, whose Theory of Free Banking will be my next read, is a former Rothbardian disciple who sums it up thus:Rothbard, on the other hand, was only too determined to identify himself with the Austrian School and, more than that, to both take part in a personality cult, built around von Mises, and attract such a cult himself. One sign of the presence of such a cult is precisely the scorn its members heap on potential rivals to the cult figure.As a monetary economist (I don't pretend to judge Rothbard's other economic contributions) Rothbard was mediocre to bad. His version of the Austrian business cycle theory was naive--in essence it equated behavior of M consistent with keeping interest rates at their "natural" levels with the elimination of fractional-reserve banking, an equation that holds only with the help of about a dozen auxilliary assumptions, all of which are patently false. He then went on to conjure up an equally false history of banking and of bank contracts designed to square his theory of the cycle, with its implied condemnation of fractional reserve banking, with his libertarian ethics.As such, I give this book 3 stars out of 5. It's very readable, and you can learn a good deal of history, monetary economics, and how banking works from it. However, if you don't take it with a large grain of salt you may not see the many errors and omissions that cause it to be quite slanted.