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Government Says Medicare’s Life Extended

“Medicare’s finances have been strengthened by the new law setting in motion broad changes to the nation’s health-care system, according to a government forecast issued Thursday, which says the fund that pays for older Americans’ hospital care will last a dozen years longer than expected.” (Washington Post, Friday) What’s worth less than a government forecast? [...]

6Aug2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

Art Subsidies to Be Cut in Britain

“The art scene exploded in Britain over the past decade, giving rise to jewels like the Tate Modern museum on the silvery banks of the Thames and sparking a renaissance of playwrights, filmmakers, artists and dancers. The fuel for that boom: a surge in generosity from Britain’s single biggest patron of the arts — the [...]

4Aug2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

“The Taxing Power, My Dear”

The legal committee soon broke into a row because the legal problems were so terrible. The constitutional problem was the greatest one. How could you get around this business of the State-Federal relationships? It seemed that couldn’t be done. We continued to wrangle about it for days. But one day I went out to tea, [...]

12Jul2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

Ramon Diaz and the Spread of Liberal Ideas in Uruguay

Uruguay, a country of approximately 68,000 square miles located between two giants, Argentina and Brazil, was one of the most prosperous Latin American countries at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today, its GDP ranks low on the continent, amounting to $11 billion in 2003. A brief overview of its history will explain this decline. [...]

4Jul2010 | | 5 comments | Continued

A letter*

Dear Lawyer, The following is a letter sent to A. J. De Bartolomeo of the San Francisco law firm of Girard Gibbs & De Bartolomeo on August 6, 2004, in connection with litigation against PayPal, the Internet payment company. The suit alleged that PayPal’s customers have been injured because PayPal “did not provide account statements [...]

2Jul2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

How Not to Respond to Higher Gasoline Prices

Mix together surging gasoline prices, a conflict in the Middle East, and a presidential election year, and what do you get? Given the sorry state of economic education among our political elites, you are likely to find bad energy – policy proposals and an increased willingness to intervene in the very market forces that are [...]

1Jul2010 | | 2 comments | Continued

An Economist Reflects on Law

I graduated from law school ten years ago. During that decade I’ve often reflected on the differences between my experiences in law school and those as an economics graduate student. The most obvious difference is that earning my Ph.D. was vastly more interesting and fun than earning my J.D. I am not criticizing my law [...]

30Jun2010 | | 1 comment | Continued

An Economics Lesson for the Drug Czar

A few years ago I heard a news report that then-drug czar General Barry McCaffrey considered it “good news” that Americans’ spending on illegal drugs had fallen to $57.3 billion in 1995 from $91.4 billion in 1988. The implication of the report was that the reduction was evidence of a successful anti-drug policy, presumably one [...]

30Jun2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

Businessmen on Business Values

A Cato Institute report issued last October estimates corporate welfare at $87 billion in 2001. That’s 30 percent bigger than Cato’s previous 1997 corporate welfare estimate of $65 billion. Welfare for business? Business in bed with the state? What goes on? (See Stephen Slivinski, “The Corporate Welfare Budget: Bigger Than Ever,” Cato Policy Analysis No. [...]

30Jun2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

What’s Wrong with Reparations for Slavery

There has been much debate recently about reparations for slavery. According to its proponents, the federal government should award Americans of African descent financial damages solely because slavery, as an institution, existed in the United States from the founding until almost a century later. Three principal arguments are offered: (1) The legacy of slavery has [...]

30Jun2010 | | 20 comments | Continued

The Private Road to Freedom

There is not a state in the union that does not struggle from year to year to build and maintain roads in something resembling an efficient, timely, or competent fashion. State legislatures and city governments raise only a chuckle from their constituents when suggesting that this time, this budget, they will get it right. In [...]

29Jun2010 | | 1 comment | Continued

Market-Based Higher Education

As experience continues to prove that private industry can do things more cost effectively and with better customer satisfaction than governmental entities, debate has shifted to what functions are appropriately in the government’s realm. Over the past several decades various institutions have arisen to challenge the notion that higher education is among the activities that [...]

29Jun2010 | | 1 comment | Continued

E.G. West: Champion of the Market for Education

(Editor’s Note: Professor E. G. West, the distinguished economist and historian of education, died last October 6 at the age of 79. His most recent articles in this magazine, “The Spread of Education Before Compulsion: Britain and America in the Nineteenth Century” and “Classical Libertarian Compromises on State Education,” appeared in the July and October [...]

29Jun2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

Second Amendment Applies to States, Cities, Court Rules

“The Supreme Court ruled Monday that cities and states must abide by the 2nd Amendment, strengthening the rights of gun owners and opening courthouse doors nationwide for gun rights advocates to argue that restrictions on firearms are unconstitutional.” (Los Angeles Times, Tuesday) “…[T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be [...]

29Jun2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

But Is There Such a Thing as a Free Breakfast?

Back in the mid-eighties I participated in a conference of small business owners. (Very small—my own multinational corporation consists of me, my wife, and a dog. The dog is part-time.) One workshop leader explained that we could no longer deduct 100 percent of business travel meals. Henceforth, we could only deduct 80 percent (that dropped [...]

27Jun2010 | | 0 comments | Continued

Tips to Hike Your Taxes

Taxes are due and refunds are flowing. What’s a good tax hiker to do? Keep his ill-gotten gains or give them back? The New York Times Magazine features a column titled “The Ethicist.” It is basically modern liberalism meets Ann Landers. As rebate checks were being cut, Ms. Tamar Kotelchuck, a resident of Somerville, Massachusetts, [...]

27Jun2010 | | 1 comment | Continued

Phony Food Crisis

Green icon Paul Ehrlich is widely known for his absurdly inaccurate projections regarding population and food. Rarely does a doomsday projection pass by without his embracing it. But most of his previous false claims are forgotten, or ignored, by the anti-capitalist coalition of today. After all, Ehrlich made those claims in 1968, and that was [...]

27Jun2010 | | 1 comment | Continued
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