Free Market

The middle classes have always been the only dependable source for taxes. If a government really wants revenue, that is where they have to go. 

Last year, the governor of Alabama proposed and then overwhelmingly lost a bitter referendum to increase taxes and boost revenue. Voters rightly saw the campaign as a slick attempt to expand the public sector’s power, prestige, and wealth transfers by increasing the degree of legal plunder in Alabama’s tax system.

People are right to feel excluded, ignored, and otherwise ill-served by the political system. And yet what do the two parties do about this?

Mises was right that unions have always been a primary source of anti-capitalistic propaganda. But since he wrote Human Action, American unions have also been at the forefront of lobbying efforts on behalf of the regulation and taxation of business—of capital—that has severely hampered the market economy, making everyone, including unionists, worse off economically.

If we had the medical system that a number of politicians and newspaper editorial writers in this country have been demanding, I very likely could have died.

With the recent rate hike, the mainstream press obediently parrots the macroeconomic analysis offered by our friendly central planners at the Federal Reserve. The average citizen knows that he or she is not nearly smart enough to understand the complex interrelationships of various price indices, yield curves, consumer confidence, and so forth—that’s Greenspan’s job.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal is a perfect example of how bad economic arguments in support of good ends can be easily twisted and used to confuse the general public.

Today we demand that the price of computers and bandwidth fall month by month but we oddly expect the prices of many other goods to constantly rise (houses, education, health care, taxes). And so we adjust our expectations accordingly. It takes some imagination to see how the system would work if we were guaranteed our right to deflation.

Colleges offer their students a taste of reality by simulating the political atmosphere of society with the presence of student government associations (SGAs). The election process succeeds in mimicking many aspects of real political campaigns: the cutthroat environment of campaign promises combined with the relentless schmoozing of constituencies, and mindless pride.

Booming home prices and record low interest rates are allowing homeowners to refinance their mortgages, "extract equity" to increase their spending, and lower their monthly payment! As one loan officer explained to me: "It’s almost too good to be true."