Free Market

Seen and heard almost everywhere in New York are these four words: "Hey, you never know." It's the slogan of the New York State Lottery Commission, and it is used to trick people into a self-imposed form of higher taxation.

End the lies, smears, and attacks against average people for their supposed intractable racism. Stop the federal occupation of local school districts in the name of racial balance. Dethrone the federal judges who impose de facto quotas in every public institution and mandatory preferences in every private one. Come clean on the real purpose of racial politics, which is not justice but power and political spoils.

In fact, the Roosevelt legacy is not individualism; it is certainly not liberty. His continuing legacy is one of unprecedented government intervention. Roosevelt crushed property rights. He constructed huge public works projects. He also helped lead the U.S. into its disastrous slide into imperialism and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans in numerous foreign conflicts (and millions of foreigners). In reality, the leviathan state in all its evil owes much to TR.

It's time to start thinking of the stock market as a giant S&L. Money continues to pour in, despite a bounty of evidence that the extraordinary gains of the last few years cannot be enjoyed in the near future. The perception has never been stronger that the stock market is the right place to be for your long-term investment needs.

The Free Market 16, no. 2 (February 1998)

Scrooge came in the form of government last year. The company Bill Gates built into the planet's leading money machine is still the target of a federal probe and a senate inquiry. The charge: anti-competitive behavior.

China is undergoing one of the great economic transformations in human history. It has moved from communism toward what it calls "market socialism" at breakneck pace, and enjoyed double-digit economic growth as a result.

When the IMF declares a country an "economic miracle," look out. A financial crisis cannot be far behind.

Everyone knows about the class-action lawsuit against Hooters, the restaurant featuring waitresses in shorts and tight t-shirts. In the settlement, Hooters paid $2 million to the men who were denied the opportunity to serve as Hooter Girls, another $1.75 million in lawyer's fees, and created three new "gender-neutral positions."

The dispossession of the Indians—culminating in the late 1880s with the surviving tribes of the West being herded onto reservations—was the result of a corrupt and immoral relationship between certain Northern industrialists, particularly government-subsidized railroads, and the federal politicians whose careers they financed and promoted.