The line for the self-checkout registers at my neighborhood Albertsons stretched into the store’s produce section. Is this human progress? I wondered, scanning my groceries—this just after I had filled my car’s gas tank at a not-so-convenient convenience store near work. Not long ago, someone not only pumped your gas and cleaned your windshield
According to popular thinking, the government’s definition of money is of a flexible nature. Sometimes it could be M1, and at other times it could be M2 or some other M money supply. M1 includes currency and demand deposits. M2 includes all of M1, plus savings deposits, time deposits, and money market funds. By popular thinking what determines
“The Earth speaks to us through the elements of nature. In every natural thing, we can find a hidden, powerful message.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson Every natural element with which the earth has been endowed has a usefulness—a purpose. If we listen to gold, its message is loud and clear—gold is money. To serve as natural money is gold’s highest purpose.
For those who would find relief knowing the Bible sanctions a market-derived medium of exchange, Gary North’s Honest Money will come as a godsend (no pun intended). Even for those reprobates who forswear a religious worldview, his book will provide a solid grounding in monetary theory and history. North’s vast understanding of money and banking
On October 7, 2022, US congressman Alex Mooney (a Republican from West Virginia) introduced a bill (the Gold Standard Restoration Act , H.R. 9157) that stipulates that the US dollar must be backed by physical gold owned by the US Treasury. The initiative clearly indicates that the increasingly inflationary US dollar is triggering efforts to get
Most economists believe that a general decline in the prices of goods and services is bad news because it is associated with major economic slumps such as the Great Depression. In July 1932, the yearly growth rate of US industrial production stood at –31 percent whilst in September 1932 the yearly growth rate of the US Consumer Price Index (CPI)
What would people use for money in a genuine free market? A lot of people answer the question in this way. We really don’t know the answer for sure. It would be up to the people who live in that society. Because in a genuine free market, there would be no state at all, there would be no money mandated by the state. People would compete to
According to the Austrian business cycle theory, the boom-bust cycle emerges in response to a deviation in the market interest rate from the natural interest rate, or the equilibrium interest rate. As a rule, it is held, the tampering with market interest rates by the central bank sets the boom-bust cycle in motion. Given this viewpoint, one might
By the beginning of the fourth century, the Roman Empire had become a completely different economic reality from what it had been at the beginning of the first century. The denarius argenteus , the empire’s monetary unit during the first two centuries, had virtually disappeared since the middle of the third century, having been replaced by the
This will be brief, appropriate to the topic at hand. It consists of a quote from Milton Friedman found in Joseph Salerno’s outstanding book, Money: Sound and Unsound : If a domestic money consists of a commodity, [such as] a pure gold standard or cowrie bead standard, the principles of monetary policy are very simple. There aren’t any. The
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.