gavel Government Intervention
State involvement in economic affairs
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View Full Quote"Because it's always so attractive to be able to do good at somebody else's expense. That's the real problem of our government. Government is a way by which every individual believes he can live at the expense of everybody else. I'm just repeating what Bastiat said two centuries ago."
View Full Quote"You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state."
View Full Quote"Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation."
View Full Quote"There are four ways in which you can spend money. You can spend your own money on yourself. When you do that, why then you really watch out what you're doing, and you try to get the most for your money. Then you can spend your own money on somebody else. For example, I buy a birthday present for someone. Well, then I'm not so careful about the content of the present, but I'm very careful about the cost. Then, I can spend somebody else's money on myself. And if I spend somebody else's money on myself, then I'm sure going to have a good lunch! Finally, I can spend somebody else's money on somebody else. And if I spend somebody else's money on somebody else, I'm not concerned about how much it is, and I'm not concerned about what I get. And that's government."
View Full Quote"I don't believe that we shall ever have good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government. Because we can't take them violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly or round-about way introduce something they can't stop."
"The direct cause of massive unemployment is labour market inflexibility. In fact, state intervention in the labour market and union coercion, made possible by the privileges the legal system confers on unions, results in a series of regulations which make the labour market one of the most rigid."
menu_book Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles
View Full Quote"The crisis did not hit us despite the presence of our monetary and financial authorities. It hit us because of them."
menu_book Deflation and Liberty
View Full Quote"Next to bombing, rent control seems in many cases to be the most efficient technique so far known for destroying cities."
menu_book The Political Economy of the New Left: An Outsider's View
View Full Quote"This expansion is the unavoidable consequence of the progressive restriction of the individual citizen's freedom, of the inherent trend of present-day economic and social policies toward the substitution of government control for private initiative."
menu_book Bureaucracy
View Full Quote"A bureaucrat differs from a nonbureaucrat precisely because he is working in a field in which it is impossible to appraise the result of a man's effort in terms of money."
menu_book Bureaucracy
View Full Quote"What characterizes our time is the expansion of the sphere of government interference with business and with many other items of the citizenry's affairs."
menu_book Bureaucracy
View Full Quote"As against these popular fallacies there is need to emphasize the truism that a government can spend or invest only what it takes away from its citizens and that its additional spending and investment curtails the citizens' spending and investment to the full extent of its quantity."
menu_book Human Action: A Treatise on Economics
View Full Quote"Each privileged caste aims at the attainment of new privileges and at the preservation of old ones."
menu_book The Clash of Group Interests and Other Essays
View Full Quote"Yes, the deficit is a grave problem, but the way to cut it is never to increase taxes (certainly not during a recession!) but instead to slash government expenditures."
menu_book Making Economic Sense
View Full Quote"No, the only sound cure for deficits is a simple but virtually unmentioned one: cut the federal budget."
menu_book Making Economic Sense
View Full Quote"He had the tactical wit to dress up ancient statist and inflationist fallacies with modern, pseudoscientific jargon, making them appear to be the latest findings of economic science."
menu_book Keynes, the Man
View Full Quote"Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct."
menu_book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
View Full Quote"To sell below the just price is loss to the seller; to buy above it is loss to the buyer. The prince cannot without injustice compel men to sell below the common price, for this is to force them to give what is theirs to others without compensation."
menu_book De Iustitia et Iure (On Justice and Law)
View Full Quote"The pattern is: (1) The anointed assert that there is some grave danger or crisis. (2) The anointed propose some course of action to deal with it. (3) Evidence that the proposed course of action has made things worse is either ignored or explained away. (4) The anointed proceed as if the policy were working, blaming any remaining problems on the inadequacy of commitment to the policy."
menu_book The Vision of the Anointed
View Full QuoteView Full Quote"There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs. And you try to get the best trade-off you can get. That's all you can hope for."
"In the unconstrained vision, human nature is not fixed but is capable of being changed by social institutions and social policies. If human beings are capable of improvement, even of perfection, then the question of how to design the best society, with the best social institutions, is a much more open-ended question than if human nature is treated as a given constraint."
menu_book A Conflict of Visions
View Full QuoteView Full Quote"The state as we know it consists of an aspirational cartel of dominant industrial interests in every sector which are engaged in ongoing conspiracies against a free and competitive marketplace."
auto_stories Books
A Conflict of Visions
Sowell's landmark 1987 work arguing that the deepest divide in political and social thought is not between left and right, but between two fundamen...
Read MoreBureaucracy
Mises contrasts profit management, guided by market prices and the discipline of loss, with bureaucratic management, guided by rules and discretion...
Read MoreThe Clash of Group Interests and Other Essays
In this 1945 essay collection, Mises rebuts the Marxist claim that class conflict is inherent to the market order: voluntary exchange harmonizes in...
Read MoreDeflation and Liberty
A challenge to the mainstream view that deflation is harmful, arguing that falling prices are a natural and beneficial feature of a free market eco...
Read MoreKeynes, the Man
Rothbard's critical mini-biography of John Maynard Keynes, portraying him as shifty and manipulative and arguing that his celebrated 'General Theor...
Read MoreMaking Economic Sense
A collection of Rothbard's newspaper and journal columns from 1982 to 1995, applying Austrian economics to deficits, inflation, welfare, and the my...
Read MoreThe Political Economy of the New Left: An Outsider's View
Written after a sabbatical spent observing the American New Left on university campuses, Lindbeck's short, sharp critique dissects the movement's e...
Read MoreThe Vision of the Anointed
The 1995 sequel to *A Conflict of Visions*, focusing specifically on the unconstrained vision as held by a self-appointed intellectual elite, 'the ...
Read MoreLa Tyrannie fiscale
Exposes the French tax system as arbitrary, economically destructive, and morally indefensible, showing that high taxation is not a neutral technic...
Read Moreperson Authors
psychology Concepts
The Fly on the Coach
An idiom drawn from Jean de La Fontaine's 1678 fable