Interventionism

I here offer what I regard as Bush’s top ten economic errors, which might be the very errors that will make the next depression far worse than it needs to be. Needless to say, this list is not exhaustive.

Ending price supports would certainly allow agricultural markets to work more efficiently, but isn’t it odd to observe the government voluntarily ending a subsidy program that benefits a powerful political constituency—wealthy corporate farmers? It is odd indeed, which is why it isn’t true.

How is Social Security different in kind from any other government program? Charles Rounds argues that it is not different at all.

Opponents of employment-at-will speak of defending an employee's "individual freedom." Arthur Foulkes argues that this isn't freedom at all.

On the face of it, who can object to the Supreme Court's decision that permits wine consumers to buy directly from out-of-state wineries? This is just the free market at work. The state laws that prohibited the practice were nothing but a legal leftover from prohibition days and a mercantilist privilege granted to politically powerful distributors who thought only of their monopoly.

I’m not on board the anti-Splenda train.

Presented at the San Jose State Workshop in Applied Political Economy; 2 May 2005.

The only really proper reform of Social Security is the gradual abolition of the whole system.

The Business Roundtable, with 160 of the largest U.S.

Recorded at the Austrian Economics and Financial Markets conference at The Venetian Hotel Resort Casino, Las Vegas, 02-19-2005