The Austrian Institute Blog offers current analyses and opinions on capitalism, the market economy, social policy, and questions of justice.
There are many forms of giving, but only one that generates general prosperity: capitalism. It does not begin with exchange, but with giving. It is not the state that creates prosperity, but the entrepreneur and businessman. The cause of mass prosperity is individuals, specific people, their actions and their ideas.
Contrary to what inequality researcher Thomas Piketty and his colleagues claim, the gap between rich and poor in the USA has barely widened over the years. The tax data has been misinterpreted. Once again, ideology is pitted against facts.
What conservatives and liberals often have in common is their opposition to certain forms of dirigiste and tendentially collectivist political measures. However, this is driven by very different motives, as elucidated by Friedrich A. von Hayek. The difference is still of high relevance today.
The French Revolution was a complex historical event, and its intellectual foundations were likewise complex. It is a mistake to reduce it to the Jacobin terror. It was a liberal revolution whose ideals sprang from the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition.
The ECB’s new monetary policy leaves one important question unanswered: Will a normalization of Target balances also follow, that is, will the problem of debt within the eurozone be solved as well? If not, a normalization of monetary policy will be impossible.
The USA and the EU have recently been in a subsidy race—industrial policy by bureaucrats. The innovative forces of the market are being undermined and the inefficiency of these measures is predictable.
Inflation is profoundly socially unjust. Its causes lie above all in an expansionary monetary policy, and this must be stopped. If policymakers want to prevent the inevitable recession that will follow, they will only make the problems worse.
In Germany, there is a growing gap between the inflation of the state apparatus and its ability to fulfill its tasks. Politics suffers from political fantasies of omnipotence and constitutional ignorance. Who is to blame?
