Opening the Floodgates: Why America Needs to Rethink its Borders and Immigration Law

In recent years there have been numerous highly publicized federal raids against companies that had violated the law by employing illegal aliens. The hapless people were deported and the companies slapped with stiff penalties. Generally, the reaction has been, “Well, it’s about time the government got tough!”
For the most part, the strident voices of the [...]

Worker Freedom in Peril

The Alliance for Worker Freedom (AWF) recently published its 2007 Index of Worker Freedom (IWF).The index ranks each of the 50 states on the basis of ten variables that affect the freedom of workers. “Freedom” is defined properly as the absence of interferences with individual worker choices.
After explaining the ten variables used and identifying [...]

Stealing for Union Bosses

Charles Baird is a professor of economics emeritus at California State University at East Bay.
H. L. Mencken opined that “Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.” The November 2006 congressional elections are an excellent example of Mencken’s proposition.
The attempts by the 110th Congress to steal property and other rights from [...]

Book Reviews – January 2008

• The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care
  
  by David Gratzer Reviewed by Jane M. Orient
  
• Self-Determination: The Other Path for Native Americans
  Edited by Terry L. Anderson, Bruce L. Benson, and Thomas F. Flanagan Reviewed by William L. Anderson, Jr.
  
• The Wal-Mart Revolution
  by Richard Vedder and Wendell Cox Reviewed by George Leef
• On the Wealth of Nations
  by P.J. O’Rourke Reviewed by Raymond J. Keating
  

Paycheck Protection: Much Less Than Meets the Eye

On June 14 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its unanimous verdict in Davenport v. Washington Education Association (WEA) in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of the “paycheck protection” section of a Washington state campaign-finance-regulation initiative adopted in 1992 by 72 percent of the voters. That section required labor unions to get the permission [...]

Hayek on Closed Shops and Yellow Dogs

Charles Baird is a professor of economics and the director of the Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies at California State University at East Bay .
In my December 2006 column I discussed some of Hayek’s classical-liberal views on the rule of law and labor unions. In brief, Hayek approved of voluntary unionism based on [...]

Big Government — Big Risk

In his Freeman column last June, “The End Run to Freedom,” economist Russell Roberts makes the following argument: As people get wealthier, they demand more security. Their demand for security leads many people to favor the welfare state or the nanny state. The welfare state refers to a government that subsidizes people who bear losses; [...]

Hayek on the Rule of Law and Unions

In F. A. Hayek’s mind the rule of law has two equally important parts. Like most writers on the subject he argued that the rule of law requires everyone, including those who wield government powers, to be bound by the same set of rules. He called this principle “isonomia” (Greek for “equal law”). Isonomia, by [...]