I had no idea that the great economic journalist Henry Hazlitt was indeed related to the great essayist William Hazlitt. Turns out, according to this archival Time article about H. Hazlitt succeeding H.L. Mencken as editor of the American Mercury, William was Henry’s great-great-great uncle. I’m grateful to Scott Lahti for bringing this to my [...]
A classic Peter Brimelow article from Forbes on an eminently sensible idea that’s now getting more attention thanks to Ron Paul.
Bruce Bartlett tax a look at the latest scam to harness the power of antitax sentiment without actually cutting taxes, the so-called FairTax. Something in general that the not-very-rich, which is most of us, should keep in mind: any revenue-neutral tax reform is going to be a massive tax hike on people like you [...]
Finished copies of Brian Anderson’s Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents arrived at the ISI Books offices yesterday. It’s a handsome book, if I do say so myself, and while I’m skeptical of any concept that originates with Michael Novak, I’m looking forward to seeing what Anderson has to say. His earlier South Park Conservatives wasn’t [...]
Both of whom I hope to write about in the not-too-distant future. Here’s Roger Kimball in The New Criterion on Hayek. And here are a couple of links to reviews of the new Thomas McCraw bio of Joseph Schumpeter, which looks to be excellent: The Economist, NY Sun. I hadn’t known that Schumpeter is [...]
Last Thursday I attended the Culture of Enterprise event at the Cato Institute, “What Should Be a Culture of Enterprise in an Age of Globalization.” Thomas Woods gave a talk that was an absolute tour de force and, fortunately, it’s available on-line. Hear it here (MP3), or watch it here (Real video). Those [...]
Henry Regnery’s Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher show a side of Austrian-born economist Joseph Schumpeter seldom seen elsewhere:
At an early lecture he gave us a reading list, with the remark, “If one of our professors at the University of Vienna, Bohm-Bawerk, for example, had given us a reading list, we would have thrown it back [...]
A classic from Murray Rothbard (who also takes a well-deserved shot at economists /econometricians invading other fields):
In recent years, economists have invaded other intellectual disciplines and, in the dubious name of “science,” have employed staggeringly oversimplified assumptions in order to make sweeping and provocative conclusions about fields they know very little about. This is [...]
I’ve been enjoying the Paul Cantor “Commerce and Culture” seminar at the Mises Institute so much so far that I haven’t set aside any time for blogging. Catch up on what I haven’t been writing, though, by following the live webcasts of Professor Cantor’s lectures here.
Clifford Thies’s Mises.org article on the penny – which John Fund and other ne’er-do-wells would like to abolish — isn’t quite the defense that I’d like to see, but it’s a start. Then penny is indeed nearly worthless and actually costs more to mint than it’s worth. But tax money wasted on ineffecient minting is [...]