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By Mises Updates

Interviewed by host Alan Butler, Mark Thornton discusses the current economic situation, the end of Prohibition, the Articles of Confederation, and several other interesting topics.

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Mises Updates

From the panel recorded at the 2014 Austrian Economics Research Conference in Auburn, Alabama, on 20 March 2014.

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Mises Updates

[After reading Peter Klein's interview in Mises Daily today, you're probably thinking to yourself: "I would love to read more on this, and I want to do it right now." So, here is the full 3,000-word original version of the interview, thanks to eTalks. -ed]

Editor’s Note: Peter G. Klein, is Executive Director and Carl Menger Research Fellow of the Mises Institute and Associate Professor in the Division of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Missouri. At Missouri he also directs the McQuinn Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, and he holds adjunct faculty positions with the Truman School of Public Affairs and the Norwegian School of Economics. His research focuses on the economics of organization, entrepreneurship, and corporate strategy, with applications to diversification, innovation, food and agriculture, economic growth, and vertical coordination. Klein has authored or edited five books and has published over 70 academic articles, chapters, and reviews.

He taught previously at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Georgia, and the Copenhagen Business School, and served as a Senior Economist with the Council of Economic Advisers. He is also a former Associate Editor of The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek. He lectures regularly at the Mises University and other Mises Institute events.

Klein received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He co-founded the popular management blog Organizations and Markets.

To learn more about him, check out this this this this and this.

eTalk’s Niaz Uddin has interviewed Peter Klein recently to gain insights about entrepreneurship, economics and education which is given below.

Niaz: Dear Peter, thank you so much for joining us in the midst of your busy schedule. We are very thrilled and honored to have you at eTalks.

Peter: It’s my pleasure to participate!

Niaz: You are the prominent researcher, speaker, author, analyst and think tank in the field of entrepreneurship, innovation, economics, and education. At the very beginning of our interview can you please tell us about Entrepreneurship? What is entrepreneurship to you? What are the different contexts of entrepreneurship?

Peter: The terms “entrepreneur,” “entrepreneurship,” and “entrepreneurial” are used in many ways, not always consistently! On the one hand, entrepreneurship is often used to mean self-employment: an entrepreneur is a person who starts or operates a small business. On the other hand, we also use the term “entrepreneurial” to refer to something broader, a mindset or way of …read more

Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Ryan McMaken

Peter Klein writes in today’s Mises Daily:

Unfortunately, most people see economics as a dry, technical subject that involves poring over charts and graphs and writing equations to describe the “equilibrium” behavior of hypothetical actors. But economics is a logical, deductive, human science about real people acting in the real world, with all the dynamism, unpredictability, and creativity that entails. Markets aren’t static, lifeless mathematical constructs but lively, vigorous spaces where people interact and coordinate. Firms, markets, and industries don’t just come into existence by themselves, they have to be created and operated by real people with real responsibility. These people are entrepreneurs, what Mises called the “driving force” of the market economy. That’s one reason I’m attracted to the “Austrian” approach to economics, which has always placed the entrepreneur at the front and center of production and exchange — not an incidental actor who steps in to introduce novelty then fades into the background as the “normal” market process resumes. Entrepreneurship, as decisive action under uncertain conditions, is at the very heart of a market economy.

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Joseph Salerno

This year Tax Freedom Day falls on April 22, three days later than last year.  By that date, Americans will have earned sufficient  income to pay the $3.0 trillion and $1.5 trillion they will be forced to pay this year in federal and state taxes, respectively. The total of $4.5 exceeds the amount they will spend this year  on food, clothing, and shelter.  So the total costs of Wall Street bank bailouts, military bases in 130 foreign countries,  maintaining 1 percent of the U.S. adult population in prison cages, most for nonviolent crimes, drones to kill foreign and U.S. citizens, subsidies to large agribusiness corporations, militarized and trigger-happy police forces, and all the other important “public goods” the government supplies now costs us more than the basic necessities for sustaining human life.  When government borrowing, which entails future taxation,  is included the Tax Freedom Day is pushed back 15 days to  May 6.  In 1900, prior to the enactment of the federal income tax laws in 1913, U.S. citizens paid 6 percent of their income in taxes and Tax Freedom Day was January 22.

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Source: MISES INSTITUTE

By Gene Healy

Gene Healy

“‘Imperial Presidency’ Becomes a Rallying Cry for Republicans,” the New York Times headline blared in a story in the April 1 print edition. But the Grey Lady wasn’t fooling: it’s the GOP’s “unified anthem” for 2014, reflecting “conservative philosophy about the appropriate role of government.”

“On core Imperial Presidency concerns, the GOP rank-and-file are better than their leadership, but they could use a better standard bearer.”

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., is leading the charge. In March, he released an updated white paper on “The Imperial Presidency,” and helped shepherd the adroitly acronymed ENFORCE the Law Act (for “Executive Needs to Faithfully Observe and Respect Congressional Enactments”) through the House.

The bill, which tries to compel the courts to rule on issues like the president’s repeated flouting of Obamacare deadlines, was necessary, Cantor insisted, because “the president’s dangerous search for expanded power appears to be endless.”

I’ve long argued that the Right should rediscover its historic skepticism toward executive power, so the Republicans’ new tune should be music to my ears. But while it’s got a nice beat, I’m not sure I can dance to it.

For one thing, the GOP’s latest legislative nostrum won’t force President Obama to care about his duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” As the Cantor report describes it, the ENFORCE the Law Act “mandates that the courts set aside their own court-created standing rules and … prevents courts from using procedural excuses” to avoid “important separation of powers cases.”

In other words, it subverts separation of powers principles in an attempt to enforce them. The courts are unlikely to comply.

What’s more, the Cantor Report mixes legitimate concerns with bogus and trivial ones: It condemns the administration’s “extraordinary step” of refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in the courts and “leaving that job to Congress.” There’s nothing especially “extraordinary” about that; President George H.W. Bush and President Clinton, among others, refused on occasion to defend statutes they considered unconstitutional, something the presidential oath arguably requires.

Also among the president’s imperial sins, per the report: Obama “refused to abide by a statute requiring his State Department “to record ‘Israel’ as the place of birth on passports for U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem.” Cantor fails to mention that it was President George W. Bush who first refused to abide by that requirement — correctly, according to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which struck it down last year.

The GOP’s latter-day anti-imperialists …read more

Source: OP-EDS