Peripatetics

Eye on the Ball

Like clockwork, on Aug. 28 the New York Times produced another page-one story purporting to show that living standards for many Americans have fallen, this time because wages in recent years have failed to keep up with inflation. This has been happening despite rising productivity and even taking into account the shift from cash to [...]

1Nov2006 | | 0 comments | Continued

Is the Income Tax Unconstitutional?

Wishful thinking, always a temptation, is hazardous. Example: An awful lot of people think the income tax as it applies to private-sector wage earners is illegal—even unconstitutional—and they assume that if they can only come up with the right legal arguments, judges will strike down the tax and make America a free society once more. [...]

1Sep2006 | | 20 comments | Continued

“The Tariff is the Mother of Trusts”

Why should we expect business people to favor laissez faire and to abhor government intervention? Few people outside of business do so.

1Jun2006 | | 4 comments | Continued

Full Context

In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith famously wrote, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” It may seem strange that history’s best-known advocate of the free market would cast such aspersions [...]

1Apr2006 | | 0 comments | Continued

The Day the Glue Came Undone

Scenes of the devastation and suffering inflicted by Hurricane Katrina will long remain in our memories. Equally horrifying were the pictures of New Orleans residentsand policemen helping themselves to goods from stores.

1Jan2006 | | 0 comments | Continued

Separate State and Science

I don’t reach much fiction these days, but one novel I intend to read is State of Fear, Michael Crichton’s story of how environmentalists use allegedly man-made catastrophic global warming to control the population. Anyone who has the power to cause such hysteria among the Kyoto Protocol set must be doing something right. (Bjørn Lomborg [...]

1Jun2005 | | 1 comment | Continued

The Unconstitutionality of Protectionism

Even the staunchest free trader might reluctantly concede that the apparatus of protectionism—tariffs, import quotas, and anti-dumping duties—is constitutional because clause 3 of Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution delegates to Congress “power . . . to regulate commerce with foreign nations. . . .” Before we make too hasty a concession, however, [...]

1Apr2005 | | 0 comments | Continued

Moral Alchemy

The welfare state is a political-legal environment in which the government goes beyond protecting life, liberty, and property against physical aggression and fraud—the traditional classical-liberal functions—ostensibly to assure a broader conception of welfare, such as health, retirement security, employment security, education, consumer and worker safety, and so on. We should pay close attention to words. [...]

1Feb2005 | | 0 comments | Continued

Hazlitt as a Thinker

Henry Hazlitt was not only a prolific writer, he also succeeded at it early in life. In an unpublished autobiography, Hazlitt recalls that before landing his job at the Wall Street Journal in 1913, at the age of about 18, he finished writing his first book, “with the modest title” Thinking as a Science. He [...]

1Nov2004 | | 0 comments | Continued

Flight from Responsibility

Whenever I catch myself admiring a thinker, I find that he shares a trait with other thinkers I admire: an insistence on clear and honest language, a determination not to take metaphors literally. Apropos of this, September marks the 106th anniversary of the birth of FEE’s founding president, Leonard E. Read, a good time for [...]

1Sep2004 | | 2 comments | Continued

Freedom of Conscience and the Welfare State

Who says the welfare state respects freedom of conscience? Consider: In March the California Supreme Court ruled that employer-provided prescription-drug plans must cover birth-control products, even if contraception violates an employer’s religious convictions. The conscientious objector in the case is Catholic Charities of Sacramento. The nonprofit organization, which is part of the Roman Catholic Church, [...]

1Jun2004 | | 0 comments | Continued

There’s Still Work to Do

Free trade is again under assault. If there is one reason for the perennial attack it is likely the one Frédéric Bastiat made so much of: the failure to look for what is “unseen.” The costs of free trade (temporary job loss, closed firms) are easily traced to the free movement of goods, services, and [...]

1Apr2004 | | 0 comments | Continued

To the Medical Socialists of All Parties

British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Party created a small furor in Great Britain recently when its National Policy Forum issued a paper suggesting changes that might be made in the National Health Service (NHS) if the party holds power. The paper, “Improving Health and Social Care,” covers a lot of ground, but the item [...]

1Sep2003 | | 1 comment | Continued

No Shortcuts

For about ten years a number of writers sympathetic to the free market have rejoiced that more and more Americans have become shareholders in corporations through retirement accounts and direct investing. These commentators predicted that widespread stock ownership would effect a radical change in Americans’ attitudes about economic policy. No longer would they be sympathetic [...]

1Feb2003 | | 0 comments | Continued

Government Needs to Lose Weight

How ironic that just as an already bloated government is taking on major new powers, it is exhorting us to lose weight. That’s exactly what former Surgeon General David Satcher did before leaving office. In his “Call To Action To Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity,” Dr. Satcher wrote that “Our ultimate goal is to [...]

1Jun2002 | | 1 comment | Continued

Split Decision

The Second Amendment’s affirmation of the right to keep and bear arms applies to individuals, not collectives. Anyone who can read plain English already knew that. But now we have a U.S. appellate court saying so. That can’t hurt. The October ruling of a three-judge panel from the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals grew out [...]

1Feb2002 | | 0 comments | Continued

Tethered Citizens

The welfare state exists to transfer resources from those who produced them to those who did not. There can be countless motives for effecting a transfer: to equalize incomes; to feed and house the poor; to eradicate drug use; to promote exports; to inhibit imports; to subsidize business and agriculture; to certify the safety of [...]

1Dec2001 | | 0 comments | Continued
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