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 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.
According to one criticism, Moderna and Biontech, the two manufacturers of the mRNA vaccines against Covid-19, have enriched themselves from government subsidies. This is wrong. Without the perseverance of individual researchers and billions in private money, the vaccines would not exist.
The Covid-19 crisis threw many out of work, many suffered accordingly, and labor markets were also damaged. Depending on the situation, some governments fared better than others. In any case, policymakers can learn a few things from the pandemic.
The Coronavirus pandemic is a golden age for critics of civilization, moralizers, miracle healers and intellectual crisis profiteers. At last, however, the economy and the market are being talked about in a positive light again—high time, because more than a few politicians are enjoying a permanent state of emergency.
From the OECD to the EU: Although people like to profess their support for diversity, they nevertheless insist on uniformity. The G-20 wants an international tax cartel. The pressure to be economical with taxes will diminish. The losers will be the citizens.
Japan’s low interest rate policy began 30 years ago, about 15 years earlier than in the EU. But three decades of low interest rate policy meant three lost decades for Japan. In an interview with Stefan Beig, economist Gunther Schnabl explains why the low interest rate policy is so damaging to prosperity.
Compared to the USA, Europe is lagging behind in terms of information and communications infrastructure. A reexamination reveals: For too long, billions of taxpayers’ money have been invested in technologies of the past.
A hundred years before Darwin, the economist and philosopher Adam Smith discovered that, thanks to the division of labor, the most skilled workers and enterprises prevail, not simply the ones with more brute strength. Darwin was significantly influenced by this idea.
Critics of growth call for zero growth or even “degrowth”. Their fears are based on economic misconceptions and a failure to recognize the capitalist dynamic of decoupling growth from resource consumption. Moreover, they fail to recognize the needs of poor countries.
The “primacy of politics” over the logic of the economy is repeatedly and categorically demanded. Insofar as such efforts undermine the private property-based power of disposition over the means of production, it is the first step in the direction of the “other socialism.”
