All Posts Tagged With: "New York City"

The Cancer of Regulation

Politicians care about poor people. I know because they always say that. But then why do they make it so hard for the poor to escape poverty? Licensing, for example, prices poor people out of business. Take taxis: in New York City, you have to buy a license, or “medallion.” New York restricts the number [...]

24Aug2011 | John Stossel | 3 comments | Continued

Politicians Smother Cities

I like my hometown, but I must admit that New York has problems: high taxes, noise, traffic. Forbes magazine ranks my city the 16th most miserable in America. Ouch! Of course, that makes me wonder: What’s America’s most miserable city? Cleveland, says Forbes. People call it “the Mistake by the Lake.” Cleveland, once America’s sixth-largest [...]

29Jun2010 | John Stossel | 6 comments | Continued

The Forgotten Robber Barons

Conventional wisdom, which often is mostly convention and very little wisdom, confidently instructs us that rapacious capitalists dominated and victimized American society in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The white knight of government then rode to the rescue of hapless workers and consumers. The message: business bad, government good. Honest, objective historians of [...]

19Apr2010 | Lawrence W. Reed | 1 comment | Continued

Book Reviews – 2008/5

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution by Kevin R. C. Gutzman Regnery • 2007 • 258 pages • $19.95 paperback Reviewed by J. H. Huebert Conservative commentators often tell us that if only we would get back to the Constitution as it was understood, say, 100 years ago, all would be well with our [...]

1May2008 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | Continued

Hurrah for Voluntary Art!

My heart sank when I first heard about the New York City art project known as “The Gates.” One thousand workers were to put up 7,500 gates along the paths in Central Park and drape saffron-colored fabric from each one. I wasn’t reacting to the art. In fact, I hadn’t even decided if the project [...]

1May2005 | James L. Payne | 1 comment | Continued

Prosperity Is Hazardous to Our Health and Wealth?

The left long ago abandoned the argument that socialism would produce greater prosperity than capitalism (although Paul Samuelson still clung to this belief as late as 1988) and now devotes most of its energy to fabricating myriad “problems” with capitalist prosperity. A particularly shallow example of this argument was recently on display in a February [...]

1Jun2001 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo | 1 comment | Continued

The Butter Monopoly?

Can butter lovers in the greater Philadelphia and New York City metropolitan areas spread a little easier knowing that the federal government is looking out for them? Antitrust regulators are on guard against the tiniest of price increases that might result from a proposed merger in the butter industry. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) [...]

1Aug2000 | Raymond J. Keating | 2 comments | Continued

A Tribute to the Jitney

So reads the official ban on one of the oldest illegal businesses that still operate openly in Detroit, Michigan. The rather emphatic language says, in effect, “We don’t want any part of this!” And yet on public bulletin boards at grocery, drug, and department stores all over the city, one can find notices that announce, “For Jitney Service, Call This Number.”

1Jan2000 | Lawrence W. Reed | 2 comments | Continued

The Future Once Happened Here: New York, D.C., L.A., and the Fate of America’s Big Cities

Sanford Ikeda is an associate professor of economics at Purchase College—SUNY in New York. There are many ways to tell the story of urban-policy failure. Economists have shown how rent control creates housing shortages, sociologists how welfare programs destroy poor communities, and urbanologists how urban planning can debilitate cities. In his book The Future Once [...]

1Nov1998 | Sandy Ikeda | 0 comments | Continued

Three Fallacies of Rent Control

From New York to Boston to Toronto, rent control is under attack. Not surprisingly, beneficiaries of this legislated plunder of providers rental housing are sparing no effort to maintain their unmerited privileges. In so doing, they resort to a wide variety of fallacious arguments. Three in particular stand out and will be discussed here. 1. [...]

1Jun1997 | Robert Batemarco | 1 comment | Continued

Killing Enterprise

Doug Bandow is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a nationally syndicated columnist. He is the author and editor of several books, including The Politics of Envy: Statism as Theology (Transaction). The Big Apple, as New York City is known, is a bustling, energetic metropolis that nevertheless remains a difficult place for all [...]

1Nov1996 | Doug Bandow | 0 comments | Continued

Private Means, Public Ends: Voluntarism vs. Coercion

Do you have friends who are socialists? Show them Robert Zimmerman’s chapter, “New York’s War Against the Vans” in Private Means, Public Ends. Zimmerman shows private enterprise efficiently providing much-needed transportation, while the city transit police block passenger pickup, issue summonses, and otherwise harass van operators and passengers. If government is needed to provide such [...]

1Nov1996 | Fred E. Foldvary | 0 comments | Continued

The New York City Guide to Destroying an Economy

New York City once served as an international beacon of economic opportunity, attracting individuals and entrepreneurs from around the globe. But for several decades, New York’s entrepreneurial lights have been dimming, to the point now that they are all but extinguished. What brought about the demise of this once great city? The answer lies on [...]

1Aug1996 | Raymond J. Keating | 0 comments | Continued

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