After a time, it became difficult for anyone to leave the Soviet Union or its captive slave states: You could be shot. Initially, though, Comrade Lenin’s Bolsheviks were somewhat more sweet-tempered: For a few years after 1917, greedy capitalists who owned things were free to depart — just as long as they left all their […]
Derek Thompson, senior editor at The Atlantic, wrote on April 16 (citing an analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation) “Half of American taxpayers owe no federal income tax, and most of those filers actually net tax benefits from federal income taxes.” In fact, though, Mr. Thompson is at pains to point out “The majority […]
The congressional deficit-reduction “supercommittee” said Nov. 21 it had failed to reach an agreement on slashing the U.S. deficit by at least $1.2 trillion. That failure will supposedly trigger mandatory cuts to military spending and some social programs, starting in 2013. Or, perhaps, when pigs fly.
English was not the first language of the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. Hearing his graduate students at New York University repeatedly use the colloquial expression “loopholes,” he asked for an explanation. After the concept had been explained to him, according to his late student Murray Rothbard, the great economist said, “Ah, so a […]
This “post-partisan” president was going to “bring us all together,” some may recall. But at his press conference last Wednesday, President Obama said: “If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, … then that means we’ve got to cut […]
Perhaps you have heard of the Cargo Cults. If you’re going to pin your hopes of maintaining a military presence in the Pacific on a vast peninsular fortress like Singapore, the “Gibraltar of the East,” you might want to make sure Japanese soldiers can’t ride down the Malay peninsula on bicycles and turn off your […]
As we saw last week in the “Girl Scout cookies” case out of Savannah, Georgia, government — which was supposed to provide a level playing field by providing courts of law and barring interstate tariffs but otherwise stay out of the way — is destroying our economy, largely to protect the jobs of all its […]
I wouldn’t have nominated Jim Gibbons for “Mr. Charisma,” myself. He never seemed to take much joy in being governor of Nevada. Nor do I adhere to the doctrine that we should speak no ill of the politically departed. Not only were Lincoln and FDR tyrants, they didn’t even offer any attractive short-term inducements in […]
There’s a back-handed compliment buried in there. If you’re a “think tank” dumping yet another new study on a jaded press and public, ranking cities from “best” to “worst” on some topic or other (and thus not-so-secretly lobbying for more government spending on your pet projects), there’s one sure way to make headlines. Highlight the […]
Not so many decades ago, party “insiders” chose their nominees for various public offices in conventions. Some people complained this led to “cronyism.” Sometimes it did. But while the “party bosses” in those “smoke-filled rooms” might place loyalty to them and their party’s political philosophy (sometimes boiling down to little more than “more jobs for […]