Tom Woods on why the MAGA movement shouldn't ignore economics

If you neglect economics, which is really just shorthand for understanding how the world works, you will not achieve the goals that you have convinced yourself are far removed from economics.

 ~ Tom Woods, "Austrian Economics in the Age of Donald Trump," The Tom Woods Show, August 7, 2025

(Speech was given at 2025 Mises University.) 

 

Tom Woods on the U.S. government debt crisis

By now you probably know my opinion on all this: the debt problem is not going to be solved.  Almost nobody cares about it, and even people who profess to care are not nearly prepared to take the kinds of steps that need to be taken. 

It will eventually resolve itself in the form of a severe crisis.  Until then, nothing is going to be done. 

I am not normally a pessimist, as I think is obvious enough from my tone on the Tom Woods Show, but on this I know I'm right.

That doesn't make politics entirely useless: there are issues other than debt, and there's been positive movement on a handful of those.  But the spending problem will not be brought under control before the crisis.  That should be obvious.

~ Tom Woods, June 3, 2025

Tom Woods on creative destruction and human progress

I think everybody has to acknowledge, if we're being realistic about this, that any kind of free economy is going to have that outcome [winners and losers] because there will always be new developments.  There will be changes in peoples' tastes, preferences, resource availability, all kinds of things that change on a dime.  As Mises said, "We all, on some level, recognize that in order to get to the standard of living that we had, some things had to go by the wayside because they were taking up resources that were better used for other things."  But when we are involved with the thing that has to go by the wayside, we consider it the greatest injustice in mankind's history.  

But we all know on some level that if we don't do that, then we would be, let's see, we would be sitting in a society overflowing with rotting food because we would be producing so much, we couldn't consume it all, we'd still have the sanitary problem of horse fecal material all over the streets because we would be transported that way.  There are big changes that come in any kind of free economy, whether or not you have free trade.  And the thing is, in general, that works out for everybody.  But it can mean short-term displacement for some people.  You can try to mitigate that through social welfare and voluntary contributions and various services you can provide, but you would never want to just simply stop it because that's the way progress occurs.  That's the way progress that we all want occurs.

~ Tom Woods, "Is China Guilty As Charged?," 38:00 mark, The Tom Woods Show, April 18, 2025

Tom Woods on his stingray experience

When I open my eyes in the morning I'm usually looking at a wall that contains (I just counted) 60 small pictures, each of which depicts a happy memory from the past five years or so.  

Last week was rather exhausting for me, so I'm relaxing in bed before heading for the gym in a little while, and one of those pictures caught my eye.  It shows my wife and me in the ocean at a stingray experience in the Bahamas.  I went primarily for her sake, but the experience was enjoyable enough. 

At one point everyone was given a chance to touch a stingray.  I politely declined.  Then the kind of thing I can never understand happened: The event organizer, along with the other attendees, started insisting I do it, thinking that maybe I was frightened or nervous.  Nope, just don't want to.  I have no idea what difference what I do makes to anyone else there, but man did they want me to.  They insisted again.  Again, I politely declined.  I did not make a spectacle of myself, I wasn't a drama queen about it, nothing.  I simply declined. 

For some reason this episode left my wife very impressed.  She couldn't believe I had simply stood my ground.  From then on, whenever there's been pressure on me from any group at all to do something I prefer not to do, she recalls the episode with the stingray.  Sometimes people hear about an incident like this and wonder if I'm just a contrarian by nature -- particularly given my views on politics and many other subjects.  But I'm not.  

However, doing the opposite of what's expected of me has generally served me well.

~ Tom Woods, March 25, 2024

Tom Woods on right wing cancel culture regarding criticism of Israel

It's very hard to talk about this [Israel-Palestine conflict] because the names get thrown around.  The right wing, they hate cancel culture, right?  No they don't!  They love it.  And they love having their own racism.  They love antisemitism.  Everybody's an anti-Semite.  If you're three degrees north of Ben Shapiro, you're an anti-Semite.  I would assume people know what's going on there.  This is just an attempt to ruin and destroy people...

I guess it would be antisemitic to point this out, but I think it's unavoidable that if you're Isreal [with 9 million people] and they're surrounded by hundreds of millions of potential enemies, hundreds of millions of people who may not be inclined to their direction.  Now how that was supposed to work in the long run - and I know that the Zionists' side will say, "but we've been so conciliatory, look where it's gotten us" - how was this going to work without some kind of meeting of the minds here?  Was it just going to be that the U.S. was just going to keep bankrolling them forever?  Even the U.S. can't ultimately, in the long run, fix a problem in which 9 million people are surrounded my hundreds of millions who hate their guts.  Some other kind of approach had to be taken and it never was.  I don't see what's antisemitic about pointing that out.  That would seem to be the most common sense thing you have to say in this situation.

~ Tom Woods, "Ron Paul Institute Director on Best and Worst Middle East Scenarios," The Tom Woods Show, 11:30 mark, November 1, 2023

Tom Woods on AIPAC's smear of Rep. Thomas Massie

Observing the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) smearing Rep. Thomas Massie, who unlike the various pretenders is actually America First, prompted me to say something.  Massie voted against H Res 771 in support of Israel. AIPAC attacked him for this (more on AIPAC later). Massie responded: 

Instead of distorting my intent, why not post the reason I gave for voting against H Res 771: 

I condemn the barbaric attack on Israel and I affirm Israel’s right to defend itself.  However, I will not be voting for House Resolution 771 today because: 

1) It calls for sanctions on a sovereign country.  Sanctions are a prelude to war and hurt the citizens of the country more than the government of the country that’s being sanctioned.  And ultimately, sanctions create laws that will be used to prosecute American citizens (who engage in trade), not citizens of the sanctioned country.  In short, sanctions do not achieve their stated purposes but do breed resentment of our country abroad. 

2) It asserts the necessity of foreign aid commitments which I have voted against.  Our country is going bankrupt and we can’t afford to borrow money to send overseas, yet this resolution states that we should. 

3) It contains an open-ended promise of military support that is so broad that it could be interpreted to commit US soldiers to the conflict.  US troops should not be engaged in this conflict. 

4) It tends to broaden the conflict to other countries when it would be better to keep the war contained geographically. 

He then linked to the text of the resolution, which "contains some statements I do support and some statements I cannot support." 

AIPAC responded, in part: "Charges of dual loyalty are antisemitic and insult millions of patriotic Americans who stand by Israel.  The U.S. is stronger when Israel is secure." 

Where, dear reader, did Rep. Massie accuse anyone of "dual loyalty"?  A slightly hysterical and oddly unforced response, no? 

How any American patriot could have anything but contempt for the despicable and arrogant AIPAC, which goes around smearing congressman because they decline to send money to a foreign country, is beyond me.  Setting up a PAC in a foreign country and shaming politicians in that country who won't send your country money is gall on an inconceivable level. 

Imagine if I started a pro-Armenian organization that smeared anyone in public life who didn't want to send welfare to Armenia.  I personally can't imagine that, actually, because I'm not a narcissist and I have a sense of shame and decorum. 

It doesn't even matter what your opinion of the Israel/Palestine issue is: no self-respecting person with a love for his country can approve of this kind of behavior toward the great Congressman Massie, or anyone else.  It takes enormous courage to stand up against his entire party, and he should be honored for that, not smeared.

~ Tom Woods, "Rep. Massie attacked as anti-Semite," November 1, 2023

MIchael Rectenwald reflects on youth vs. experience and his life's mission

Seeing photos of myself -- on the one hand, I wish that I was younger.  I don't see myself as the camera sees me.  In my mind's eye, I'm still a young man -- forever young and never aged.  I see a young man in my mirror, not a 60-something year-old.  It's why, for example, I expect to beat my very talented thirty-year-old son in tennis, why I overextend myself, why I never expect to be tired.  It's why I catch sly, half glimpses of myself that never betray me or my age, why I think I am still as attractive as I ever was. 

On the other, I am grateful that I am no longer young.  With age comes a seasoning that makes one more or less inured to life's difficulties and inoculated to its many lies.  There is a resting knowledge that cannot be replicated in youth, youth that pines for a future that never comes as expected.  If I were to offer any advice to the young, it would be to seize the day and enjoy the process of making a way for tomorrow, with faith, hope, and charity. 

And then there is the historical reality that I would not want to be young in a world such as ours, when the world is more insane than ever, and bound to get worse.  This is why I pray for my children and my grandson, and why I keep trying, in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds, to make the world more habitable for them, to endow them with liberty and hope, and to enshrine the present by leaving a legacy to them that may be meaningful and serve as a guide for them.  I hope one day that they will read my works and realize that was part of my life's mission.

~ Michael Rectenwald

(This quote was provided by Tom Woods.  Tom writes: "It's very rare to find someone late in his career, and in his 50s, who has a complete philosophical transformation.  But that's what happened with the great Michael Rectenwald, an ex-Marxist formerly of New York University...  Well, the other day he wrote something rather melancholy and introspective -- yet determined and fearless, too, that I thought you might want to see.")

Tom Woods on the World War I blockade against Germany

Think back to World War I, when the Allies continued their starvation blockade of Germany for four months after that country surrendered.  Estimates of the consequences of that policy range from 750,000 to 1 million German civilians dead from hunger.

Within a generation, as you will recall, a rather distasteful political party emerged there, whose members, generally young, remembered having nearly been starved to death as children.  Resentment over past injustices has been a powerful and destructive force in recent history.

~ Thomas E. Woods, Jr., "Lift U.S. Sanctions: They Choke The Tyrannized More Than The Tyrants," Investor's Business Daily, March 19, 2001

Tom Woods on sanctions on Iraq and inevitable reprisals "in the form of terrorist attacks" (2001)

In general, a policy of sanctions hurts only the civilian population, leaving the government more or less untouched.

If anything, sanctions may even tend to strengthen popular support for the government inasmuch as the leader can now portray himself and his nation as the besieged victims of a vindictive U.S.

Especially disconcerting about the Clinton-Albright policy [of sanctions on Iraq] was its blithe disregard of any long-term consequences for the U.S. essentially starving a helpless country to death.

Set aside the morality of the question for a moment, as Clinton and Albright did, and think only of U.S. interests.  The Gulf War has been over for 10 years, and American students still can't distinguish Baghdad from Wagga Wagga on a map.  But do you suppose the Iraqi people have forgotten, or ever will?

If the U.S. continues on its present course, it is next to impossible to imagine that we can forever avoid the terrible reprisals, in the form of terrorist attacks - nuclear, chemical or otherwise - that our policy makes almost inevitable.

~ Thomas E. Woods, Jr., "Lift U.S. Sanctions: They Choke The Tyrannized More Than The Tyrants," Investor's Business Daily, March 19, 2001

Tom Woods on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline attack

Our ruling class will not stop making catastrophic decisions.  Destroying society over Covid is now no longer their primary idiocy.  Now it's risking nuclear war, without so much as a thought of negotiation or diplomacy, as normal people would be pursuing right now. 

I agree with Dr. Pierre Kory from episode #2209 of the Tom Woods Show: I am not jumping on any bandwagon, or putting some mob-demanded emoji on my social media, ever, unless I have thoroughly investigated the situation and decided it is not yet another psyop being played on me by psychotics. 

So now we've learned of a terrorist attack, almost surely state-led, on the Nord Stream pipelines. 

Our CIA-run newspapers (no, they aren't literally run by the CIA, but if they were, how would they be any different?) of course rushed to blame the pipeline destruction on Russia, which has precisely zero motivation to do such a thing.  If they wanted to impede the movement of natural gas from Russia to other European countries, couldn't they just turn the pipelines off rather than destroy a $20 billion project? 

Meanwhile, we have footage of Joe Biden and creepy Victoria Nuland -- Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, an unnecessary office if there ever was one -- assuring the world at the beginning of 2022 that if Russia were to invade Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 would not go forward. 

For that matter, Der Spiegel ran this headline: "CIA warns German government against attack on Baltic Sea pipelines."  And Radek Sikorski, a member of the European Parliament who chairs the delegation that deals with relations with the United States, responded to the news of the pipeline blowing up by saying: "Thank you, USA." (At the same time, the Ron Paul Institute's Daniel McAdams notes that Sikorski could be distracting attention from the actions of his own government.) 

Do we know for certain what happened? Of course not. But we know this: it's now far easier to keep European countries in line that might otherwise have broken ranks to seek energy supplies in the face of the extremely challenging winter that's on the horizon.

~ Tom Woods, September 28, 2022

Tom Woods on Theodore Roosevelt

Philosophically [Theodore Roosevelt] was the consummate Progressive, determined to bring efficiency and coordinated intelligence to bear against the trusts, against despoilers of the natural environment, and against international disorder.  He was, as one historian put it, "the first great president-reformer of the modern industrial era."  He therefore had little patience with federalism and indeed with most of the constitutional impediments that stood between him and the construction of a new American state.  Politically he was a committed nationalist.  He thus could barely bring himself to speak of Thomas Jefferson, whom he loathed; and as late as the 1880s he was still condemning Jefferson Davis as a traitor.  The Confederate cause, since it denied that a large consolidated nation was its own justification, enraged him.

~ Thomas Woods, "Theodore Roosevelt and the Modern Presidency," Mises.org, June 2, 2010

Tom Woods on Covid restrictions in New Mexico and Iowa

The great Ian Miller has another devastating chart.  We were told that New Mexico was doing so well because it had "listened to the science."  Then when Iowa lifted its restrictions, we were told it would be a disaster area.  Well, here's what the death numbers look like for the two places: 

I wonder if the media will follow up on this story!

So much of the narrative is falling, and yet the suppression of dissident voices -- voices that have been right! -- persists unabated.

~ Tom Woods, February 8, 2022

Tom Woods: Moderna pulls out of San Francisco investment conference due to Covid concerns

The "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" Department is going to need to open a five-story annex at this point, but get this: Moderna just announced that it's withdrawing from the upcoming J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference because of -- get this -- COVID concerns. 

You heard that right. The same people whose vaccine was described as extraordinarily effective are afraid to attend a conference full of vaccinated people in a city that requires proof of vaccination to enter a huge array of indoor venues. 

~ Tom Woods, December 15, 2021

Tom Woods on learning to live with Covid

We learn to live with [the flu], in exactly the same way that we will obviously have to learn to live with COVID.  We can't shut down all of society in a monomaniacal battle against one thing.  There will be horrific consequences.  At the very least, that's an eminently defensible view, and one held by some of the best scientific minds in the world.

~ Tom Woods, October 7, 2020

Tom Woods: "Is society itself not in some way self-ordering?"

I'm suggesting that libertarians have a fresh new way to look at the world because we actually ask, "Do we need institution X, do we need institution Y, and if we do need these things, do they have to be provided the way they're tradionally provided?"  Could we not learn to interact with each other on a purely voluntary basis?  Is society itself not in some way self-ordering?  Incidentally, that's why I've taken a great interest in economics.  And I feel like just the field of economics, when you understand it right, shows you something important about how society is self-ordering.  It shows you something about how social cooperation occurs spontaneously.  That's not what we're taught.  The model of society that we learn in school is that somebody with a bullhorn has to be barking out orders and then everybody obeys.  I think they're may be a more attractive way for arranging society.

~ Tom Woods, "Tom Woods: The Making of an Anti-War Libertarian," Reason TV, 2:40 mark, October 10, 2018

Tom Woods and Michael Malice on gun control

Woods: People look at gun violence and say, "guns have no redeeming qualities."  But the fact is, when it comes to fighting oppression, they are the great equalizer.

Malice: It's what allowed a petite, black woman [Harriet Tubman] to be able to stand up to the Confederacy and to the police of her time who were trying to catch slaves.  The 2nd amendment wasn't put in place so that people could have fun on the range.  The 2nd amendment was put in place as insurance, specifically in case the government got out of control.

~ Tom Woods and Michael Malice, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Real American Heroes," YouTube, 13:15 mark, June 14, 2021

Tom Woods on the government-as-problem-solver narrative

Incidentally, even if this [Covid-19] were all to go away tomorrow, it would still be crucial to talk about these numbers.  We have to do whatever we can to make sure people don't think, "That sure was a tough year, but thanks to those of us who followed the mitigation measures, we got out of it." 

As it is, despite our best efforts -- and my 2009 book Meltdown, which spent 10 happy weeks on the New York Times bestseller list -- people still think "deregulation" caused the financial crisis of 2008, even though when you ask them which repealed regulation would have prevented the crisis, they can't name one. 

They still think laissez-faire capitalism caused the Great Depression.  Those of us who have read Murray Rothbard's America's Great Depression, or know something about Austrian business cycle theory, know the truth. But that's a tiny sliver of the public. 

You'll note what all of this has in common: 

Freedom causes crises, and the alleged experts fix them. 

You need us, citizen.  We keep you safe.  We clean up the messes caused by allowing you too much freedom.  We are smart.  You are dumb.  Trust us. 

Um, how about you go jump in a lake, and we'll live our lives?

~ Tom Woods, April 6, 2021

Tom Woods on the changing Covid narrative

Maybe you've noticed the same phenomenon I have.  There's a sudden and distinct ratcheting down of the COVID hysteria in some quarters.  My old friend Steve Deace, the radio host, even compiled a bunch of them. 

For example: 

NPR headline the day before the inauguration: 

"As Death Rate Accelerates, U.S. Records 400,000 Lives Lost to the Coronavirus" 

NPR headline the day after the inauguration: 

"Current, Deadly U.S. Coronavirus Surge Has Peaked, Experts Say" 

Then, too: 

The governor of Kansas lowered the PCR testing threshold (it's still too high, but that's a step in the right direction). 

Washington, D.C., is reopening bars and restaurants, and Massachusetts is easing restrictions. 

In Chicago, the mayor is calling for bars and restaurants to reopen as soon as possible, and unionized teachers are being punished for not returning to in-person instruction. 

The so-called Republican governor of Maryland is suddenly demanding the return of in-person schooling, arguing that there is absolutely no scientific justification for any further delay. 

I've already written to you about the governor of New York urging that the state must reopen or "nothing left to open." 

And then the World Health Organization issued a document, one hour after Biden was sworn in, explaining that PCR cycle thresholds were too high, and our obsession with asymptomatics too great. 

Now look: this could all just be an amazing coincidence.  I do not rule that out.  I am saying only that it's interesting.  Because it is, isn't it?

~ Tom Woods, January 22, 2021

Tom Woods on the beauty of economics

[Economics] really is something beautiful.  It reveals to you an order that can be hidden or obscured by your own eyes.  I think Mises or Rothbard put it this way in theory and history...  If you were just to look at Grand Central Terminal in New York and not think it through, all you would see is just a bunch of people running hither and yon, and that would be the end of it.  But when you think through what's actually going on, you realize that each one of those people has a goal and is pursuing that goal, and that that's not chaos, but it's actually order that you're observing.  Well likewise for the entire economy, to a Marxist it looks like "There's duplication of production," "It's not the way I would run it if I had a bullhorn."  But the more you understand it, the more you perceive the hidden order beneath it all.  And once you perceive that, you do want other people to understand it.  In my case not just because they'll derive intellectual pleasure from understanding it, but because they'll stop wrecking it 24 hours a day!

~ Tom Woods, "Ep. 1806 From Left to Libertarian: How He Did It," The Tom Woods Show, January 5, 2021

Tom Woods on the use of hand sanitizer

You know all that mad disinfecting everyone has been doing?  You'll never guess. It's pointless. 

Even the Washington Post, in an article last week called "We Are Over-Cleaning in Response to COVID-19," wrote: "We don't have a single documented case of COVID-19 transmission from surfaces.  Not one. So why, then, are we spending a small fortune to deep-clean our offices, schools, subways, and buses?"  Meanwhile, though, lots of restaurants are still using disposable menus.  Now that's what you call not following the science. 

And now here's the problem.  We know surfaces aren't the issue, and that we're wasting enormous time and resources pointlessly deep-cleaning.  The reason we're still doing it is that the general public is still in panic mode, even after all we now know.  And because the public, convinced it's "listening to the science," is in fact not following the science at all.  So when you endure some pointless practice here and there, whose only effect is to cause you pain or at least serious inconvenience, it's very often not because a private entity seriously wants to engage in it.  It's because they have to cater to hysterics who don't know anything.  

This isn't just a matter of the government.  It's public opinion that's making the craziness possible.

~ Tom Woods, December 16, 2020