All Posts Tagged With: "activist government"
Government Is No Friend of the Poor
You’ve heard it all too many times to count, I suspect. Apologists for big government—the New York Times’s Paul Krugman and Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson being good recent examples—are convinced there’s just no good alternative to government social services. Without the government, people will go hungry. They’ll die in the streets. We’ll lapse back into [...]
4Jan2012 | Gary Chartier | 23 comments | ContinuedAlexander Hamilton and the Perils of State Capitalism
Historians have long praised Alexander Hamilton’s activist government promotion of capitalism. Hamilton’s “financial revolution” brought secure government debt, fluid securities markets, and a modern banking system to the United States. Most scholars believe these factors were responsible for the amazing growth of the U.S. economy in the subsequent 200 years. Thus while George Washington is [...]
25Aug2010 | and Tyler Watts | 7 comments | ContinuedWhy Not More Liberty?
There are two extreme views of American government and the political process. One is that policy is the result of special interests rigging the system in their favor and exploiting the ignorant or at least impotent masses. The other is that government pretty much gives the people what they want. My own view is much [...]
5Jul2010 | Russell Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Great Contraction, 1929–33
The recession that began in mid-1929 need not have become a disaster. Many downturns had occurred previously in U.S. economic history, and nearly all of them had been fairly shallow and soon followed by recovery and continued growth. In the nineteenth century most people had believed that the government neither knew how nor possessed the [...]
1Apr2007 | Robert Higgs | 0 comments | ContinuedTolls on the Road to Serfdom
D.W. MacKenzie is an assistant professor of economics and finance at SUNY Plattsburgh. Many people think their taxes are too high and that the tax system is unfair. While those who favor individual liberty might find this encouraging, the specific reasons for discontent are not entirely positive. Many Americans think the current system is unfair [...]
1Apr2007 | D.W. MacKenzie | 0 comments | ContinuedLeviathan on the Right: How Big-Government Conservatism Brought Down the Republican Revolution
By Michael D. Tanner Reviewed by Richard M. Ebeling
1Mar2007 | FEE Admin | 1 comment | ContinuedMoral 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 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedWhy Not More Liberty?
Russell Roberts holds the Smith Chair at the Mercatus Center and is a professor of economics at George Mason University. He is a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His latest book is The Invisible Heart: An Economic Romance. There are two extreme views of American government and the political process. One is that [...]
1Dec2004 | Russell Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Return of Activist Government?
In the New York Times of December 13, 2001, John D. Donahue joins the crowd that is presently arguing—or hoping—that the events of September 11, 2001, have cleared a path for the “revival” of big, all-knowing government. I do not wish to argue, here, why that might be undesirable. I do contest Donahue’s historical construction [...]
1May2002 | Joseph R. Stromberg | 0 comments | ContinuedWho’s to Blame?
Advocates of liberty are frequently confronted with the following fallback position of their intellectual adversaries: We live in a representative democracy. If you don’t like what is taking place, your beef is with the people who have freely chosen their representatives. That argument is intended to blunt criticism of activist government. If the people have [...]
1Sep2000 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedShould Government Build the Railroads?
On July 12, 1831, President Andrew Jackson, who was no prankster, did something that made many people laugh, some curse, and others rub their eyes in disbelief. He appointed 19-year-old Stevens T. Mason to be secretary and acting governor of the Michigan Territory. Granted, Mason was a very intelligent teenager and his family was nationally [...]
1Jun1998 | Burton W. Folsom Jr. | 0 comments | Continued-
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