Peter's Blog

Mainstream economists often argue that increasing the money supply is necessary to stimulate economic growth. However, Austrian economists have long recognized that monetary expansion merely creates the illusion of prosperity while sowing the seeds of future crises. Printing money cannot create real wealth or productive resources, but instead distorts economic calculation and leads to malinvestment. […]

China’s economic rise in recent decades has been nothing short of remarkable. Many attribute this success to the country’s ambitious industrial policy, which involves central planning and heavy government intervention in the economy. However, a closer look reveals that this approach leads to inefficiency and distortions that ultimately undermine economic progress. The following article was […]

Americans are increasingly anxious about artificial intelligence and what it means for their jobs, and politicians on both sides of the Pacific have begun promising to manage the transition. But the real question isn’t whether AI will displace certain jobs (that kind of creative destruction is the normal engine of economic progress); it’s whether the […]

Going from zero to one is creating something that is fundamentally new. While creating another software-as-a-service company could be extremely lucrative, it is something fundamentally different from going zero to one, as it is more like going from 28,332 to 28,333. Business ideas that already exist can be optimized and maximized by clever people but […]

Most Americans are familiar with the Keynesian idea that government spending and money creation can stimulate a sluggish economy by boosting demand. What those not versed in Austrian economics may not appreciate is that this framework gets the causal order exactly backwards: production must come before consumption, and genuine demand can only arise from prior […]

I doubt that I’m the only one who feels that something different is happening in the entrepreneurial world. While the emergence of our current world-defining tech companies in the 80s and 90s looked very different from the origin of the industrial giants of the 20th century, they still shared some recurring themes at their advent. […]

Despite pundits’ claims to the contrary, war is not good for the economy. When warhawks fail to grasp this, they fall prey to the age-old broken window fallacy. The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold. War is the ultimate […]

Some commentators are of the view that one cannot trust the market economy, which is seen as inherently unstable. If left free, the market economy could lead to self-destruction. Hence, there is the need for the government and the central bank to manage the economy. It is held, in this framework, that successful management could be achieved […]

If you listen to politicians in Washington, the Working Americans’ Tax Cut Act proposed by Virginia Representative Don Beyer sounds like a gift to the middle class. But by decreasing taxes for some by increasing them for others, it only robs Peter to pay Paul. A tax decrease that is financed by a simultaneous tax […]

Over a century of central banking has instilled an irrational fear of falling prices in the American public. But the reality is that falling prices are what make our economic lives better, and inflation, the regime’s preferred monetary policy, is far worse than deflation. The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The […]