It is only because we have a monstrous welfare/warfare state that the government "needs" to collect an income tax. The beginning of Clinton's presidency was not that long ago. The income tax can be abolished. It can be done quickly; it can be done painlessly — and it can be done for the benefit of the American taxpayer instead of the federal leviathan. Now that is real tax reform.
The 'ability-to-pay' principle resembles more the highwayman's principle of taking where the taking is good.
"To force a man to pay for the violation of his own liberty is indeed an addition of insult to injury. But that is exactly what the State is doing."
– Benjamin R. Tucker, 1893
Where is Bernanke going to create the next bubble, the one that will mask the hangover from the housing bubble in the same way that the housing bubble masked the hangover from the tech stock bubble?
Though western central banks have not been printing nearly as fast as their Zimbabwe counterpart, they do have a long history of increasing the money supply. It forces one to ask how much of the growth in Western stock markets over the preceding twenty-five years has been created by a vastly increasing money supply, and how much is due to actual wealth creation.
Even so, for those who believe that the free market would "obviously" fail in these arenas, I urge you to give the matter some more reading and thought. You might be surprised at how dubious your position is after a few hours of research.
Short sellers are no more self-interested than others in financial markets. They improve the information incorporated in market prices that we all rely on to improve social coordination, as we seek to make the best of a world of unavoidable scarcity.
To say that Bono's factory is something special would not be truthful. The Edun clothing line is doing well, and is employing hundreds of people. That's great. It's called capitalism.
Here we are 138 years later with many people still believing in the economic virtues of subsidies from farm programs to energy development.
