All Posts Tagged With: "government services"
Shakedown: The Continuing Conspiracy against the American Taxpayer
Politics has one feature that sets it apart from all sorts of voluntary action: It employs coercion. Politicians can raid the wallets of taxpayers, forcing them to part with money they would rather spend, donate, or invest according to their own desires. Much of the money thus confiscated is then spent to succor special-interest groups [...]
22Jun2011 | George C. Leef | 5 comments | ContinuedSix Political Illusions: A Primer on Government for Idealists Fed Up with History Repeating Itself
You don’t believe in magic, do you? Magicians employ a variety of tricks to deceive audiences into thinking that something has happened that can’t. They are masters of illusion. Adults know that they’re being fooled when the rabbit seems to materialize out of an empty hat. Magic is harmless fun, but the government is not. [...]
25May2011 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | ContinuedTransfer Machine
“The government who robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul,” George Bernard Shaw once said. For a socialist Shaw demonstrated good sense with that quotation. Unfortunately, America has become a laboratory in which his hypothesis is being tested. The theory of government I was taught says that government provides [...]
1Jan2010 | John Stossel | 7 comments | ContinuedThe New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal
In his new book Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies argues that immigration may have been good for America a century ago but not today—not because the immigrants have changed but because our nation has changed. That’s an interesting thesis, but as the book unfolds, the arguments sound more and more familiar. Krikorian [...]
2Apr2009 | Daniel Griswold | 0 comments | ContinuedHurricane Katrina Shows that Government Is Too Small?
By now everyone is aware of the almost inconceivable
incompetence of the Federal Emergency Management Agencys (FEMA) response to Hurricane Katrina.Those who cherish liberty might think this episode would bolster their cause.However, as usual the states intellectual bodyguards have attempted to use this disaster to justify ever higher budgets and even more dictatorial powers.
People Before Profits
Whether it’s Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan leading the Million-Man March, anti-WTO (World Trade Organization) protesters, or AIDS activists, we’re frequently treated to the chant demanding “People Before Profits.” Since profit demagoguery is a deceptively appealing tool used by scoundrels everywhere, let’s demystify the concept of profits. Let’s first get its definition out of [...]
1Nov2003 | Walter E. Williams | 0 comments | ContinuedBook Review: The Strange Death of American Liberalism, by H.W. Brands
The Strange Death of American Liberalism by H.W. Brands Yale University Press • 2001 • 191 pages • $22.50 Reviewed by George C. Leef H.W. Brands is a prolific historian with some readable books to his credit, such as his biography of Ben Franklin, The First American. In The Strange Death of American Liberalism, however, [...]
29Jan2003 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedHow Much Do the Public Schools Waste?
Governments in the United States currently spend about 4 percent of gross domestic product on “public” schools.1 Those schools also employ about 4 percent of the nation’s workforce. Although few will admit it, public education is clearly an anachronistic, socialist institution, with all of the characteristics of a typical Soviet enterprise. As such, one would [...]
1Jan2003 | John T. Wenders | 1 comment | ContinuedRed-Lining the Federal Government Budget
Dr. Timberlake is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Georgia, Athens. Throughout the United States, millions of households and business firms routinely balance their annual expenditures with their annual incomes. They look aghast and uncomprehendingly at a federal government that has not balanced its budget in the last 25 years, while its debt—the [...]
1Nov1996 | Richard H. Timberlake | 0 comments | ContinuedNonessential Government
Mr. Bandow, this month’s guest editor, is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and the author of The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology (Transaction). You might not have noticed, but the federal government closed down a while back. The sky didn’t fall. The world didn’t end. People didn’t die in the streets. In [...]
1Feb1996 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | Continued-
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