The newest political cliché offered up by the Republicans speaks of the need for an "Ownership Society." To those of us who support private property, it might sound good at first. But let us think about this before embracing it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
My impression is that we are now working with the most educated and most exposed generation ever. Rather than going through grade school and high school with only appointed texts, the students have the opportunity to seek out other points of view.
