Like mafioso John Gotti, the state uses the threat of coercion to extort money from citizens, writes William Anderson. Unlike Gotti, who never would have dreamed of demanding nearly half of a firm's profits, the state takes more than 40 percent of what a business collects over its costs.
Based on the record of deceit documented by Robert Caro in his book The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, Lyndon Baines Johnson was an evil man even before his disastrous presidency--a presidency in which he and his minions misled Americans into the Vietnam War, a presidency that nearly caused a civil war in this country.
The well-being of the majority of any nation's economically disenfranchised citizens could be realized without any state control of the nation's money supply or state regulation of peaceful economic activity, writes Harry Valetine. It is a lesson that could inspire entire populations to wrest control of the economy away from the statist elitists.
The common thief has the decency to leave you alone after he takes your money. But, society's biggest thief, government, steals money, calling it taxation, and then lurks in the shadows to tell its victims what to do, calling it regulation. And, in Las Vegas the government goes one step further, it taxes, it regulates and then competes head to head with private enterprise in the city's largest industry, tourism.
Ted Roberts asks why his president, my congressman, my governor, the Postmaster General, or the county tax assessor isn't as eager to hear his opinions as a manufacturer of sugared, cola-flavored water? Politicians seem oblivious to the charms of consumer prejudices, but giants like Pepsi, and even local mom-and-pop barbecue caterers, whirl like a weather vane in their currents.
"The myth of Lincoln cannot stand up under scrutiny," says Thomas DiLorenzo, "and after all these years, the word is finally getting out." Mises.org interviews DiLorenzo on his new book and its thesis that Lincoln's legacy was not freedom but the consolidated state. The book's high sales are as notable as the explosive controversy that has erupted about his thesis.
Foreign policy from Truman to the Reagan exacted a huge toll on American prosperity, diverting resources and expanding the government's grip on national life, writes Karen De Coster. A new book by Derek Leebaert sizes up the actual price that we paid for granting government military planners and their connected industries a blank check.
According to the Keynesian magic formula, writes Frank Shostak, government spending is all that is needed to make a society prosperous. Even today this position has prominent defenders, such as Joseph Stiglitz. If this view were correct, however, poverty in the world would have been eliminated a long time ago.
Since 1997, the federal government's office space has expanded by 280 million square feet. The average American family homestead is 2,100 square feet. The massive Empire State building fills 2.1 million feet. Thus, in only five years the federal government's physical size has grown by 134,000 single family homes or 90 Empire State Buildings.
In deregulating its power system, California seems to have made every mistake possible, writes William Anderson. For starters, it forced utilities to buy power at market rates while capping what they could charge their retail customers. This devastated the utilities. It also sent exactly the wrong signal to consumers, who had no incentive to conserve.
