News – Politics – Opinion – Podcasts
For many Americans, even lovers of American history, myself included, there are certain blank spots and gaps in knowledge. While we can appreciate that history can be and is used propagandistically to affirm certain narratives—usually by emphasis and deemphasis—it is also often the case that time constraints and desire to focus on other events helps … Read more
Most Americans can recite the opening lines of one of the two great documents published in 1776. They cannot name the other. In Philadelphia that summer, Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues declared that all men are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights — among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The document they … Read more
The Vermont Futures Project made something of a splash when it released a statistic showing that Vermont ranks 51st among 50 states (D.C. thrown in for giggles) for something they call “economic momentum.” This sounds really bad and, spoiler alert, it is. But, full confession, it’s not a statistic I was familiar with. Other organizations … Read more
Liberal big cities and states have backed themselves into a corner with out-of-control spending for social programs they do not need and not enough tax dollars to fund bloated budgets, creating massive fiscal deficits. The federal government has been a poor example for these progressive enclaves, consistently overspending and creating a deficit in the trillions … Read more
Washington has a choice this tax season: build on policies that are already driving business investment and wage growth or return to the uncertainty that has long held employers back. As millions of Americans finalize their tax returns, the real-world impact of recent pro-growth tax reforms is coming into focus and so is the risk … Read more
Ken Lund The Green Mountain State is a textbook case of how progressives employ social justice causes to drain the wallets and dreams of citizens. A growing populist backlash against a land use scheme that will steal wealth from property owners without any compensation is just the tip of the Marxist iceberg that is sinking the once-Republican … Read more
Mises Wire I’m happy to say that this year my wife and I will have celebrated 25 years of marriage and are looking forward to the next 25! For those who are familiar with my research, you’ll know that the topic of marriage and family life is a central focus of my work in part … Read more
Karl Marx believed machines would eventually turn workers into something disposable. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote that industrial labor had already reduced the worker to “a mere appendage of the machine.” In Capital, Marx argued that machinery would create a permanent “industrial reserve army” of unemployed workers. As automation increased, workers would lose bargaining … Read more
With Claude (Anthropic) — in genuine collaboration with a human who had all the ideas. A conversation between one-old-conservative and Claude (Anthropic) — March 2026 Two articles landed in the queue before the bacon was finished. Both were about artificial intelligence. All were unsettling to varying degrees. The only way to make the morning bearable, … Read more
President Trump is the best president of my lifetime, but that doesn’t say much for the rest. My suspicions that all the good headlines hide a lot of potential problems have been growing over the past several months. The predictor of the calamitous 2008-2009 financial crisis, Peter Schiff, was featured on Fox and Friends in … Read more
Unaffordability would be the goal, as well as an increasing scarcity in jobs, wages, benefits, and capital to pay for all the promises the “tax the rich” lunatics promised. They never sell it like that, nor do they know the waste, fraud, and corruption inherent in their project, which is why they need more money … Read more
As the language of Marxism becomes increasingly disguised in moralistic slogans such as “social justice” and “inclusiveness,” many people fail to recognize Marxist theories when they encounter them. They expect theories derived from Marxism to be littered with red flag phrases like “dialectical materialism” or “class conflict,” which would be the dead giveaway that they … Read more
From atop the flawed foundation of the Labor Theory of Value, Karl Marx made a series of predictions about capitalism that time has proven incorrect. Among these are the immiseration of the masses due to capital accumulation, chronic overproduction, capitalist-driven imperialism, and the inevitable rise of monopolies. Immiseration Even during Marx’s lifetime, capitalism was already … Read more
In his book Intellectuals and Race, the great economist Thomas Sowell excoriates intellectuals for their role in promoting statist social engineering schemes. Sowell defined “intellectuals” as “a particular occupation—namely, people whose work begins and ends with ideas. It is an occupational designation, rather than an honorific title, and implies nothing about the mental level of those … Read more
I am reminded of my question to Bruce Curry, “Whose money is it FIRST?” Put another way, “Who has the first claim on the money in my wallet”? Curry was an uber-progressive who frequented GraniteGrok for many years, but that was a question he would never answer. He was clear that what funding the Government … Read more
The many flavors of communism promise a lot while appealing to peoples’ envy. With your support, they will “stick it to the Man” only to turn around and become the “Man,” leaving nothing to envy. From X, a compilation by WretchardTheCat: What a sell job – a snow job, a promise of everything to everyone, … Read more
Who is going to make better economic decisions? A smallish group of self-deluded “we know all that is necessary/we know better than you do” narcissists or millions of people making self-interested decisions outside of anyone’s control? It is the First Law of Supply and Demand: Prices are competed to that level at which people want … Read more
It is always encouraging when a non–Austrian School economist accepts through his own reasoning an essential tenet of Austrian economics. Ruchir Sharma, who is chairman of Rockefeller International, founder and chief investments officer of Breakout Capital, and a well-known economic journalist, is not an Austrian, though he is aware of Friedrich Hayek’s work. He lends … Read more
Among his many memorable contributions to American arts, the great singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who passed away in September, wrote one of the most quotable lines in rock history. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” It’s a fabulous drifter anthem. It’s also entirely wrong. Part of the American political left at the time … Read more
By Wanjiru Njoya | Mises Wire – In Race & Economics, Walter Williams emphasizes the importance of causality in understanding racial inequality. He argues that it is not enough to document and track economic inequality — it is necessary also to understand its causes. Without understanding the causes of any perceived problem, any attempts to resolve … Read more