Tax credits and deductions deprive the state of revenue, while allowing greater freedom to taypayers. As such, they are good things, while closing “loopholes” or eliminating tax credits is a very bad thing. Making taxes more “efficient” or “fair” only helps governments and hurts taxpayers.
Politicians and regulators usually don’t know what they don’t know about everything from health care to your small business, but that sort of compound ignorance won’t stop them from regulating the minutiae of everyday life and commerce.
Richard Ebeling explains the basics of how central banks cause booms and busts.
It may be a simple tale, but the story of Sleeping Beauty, as retold in 2014’s film Maleficent, repeatedly makes the point that the evils of the world come from political power and those who seek it.
When the day of reckoning comes, will anyone criticize the Federal Reserve for making the unsustainable debt-fueled spending spree possible?
Long-term interest rates are going down, but many Fed observers, relying on expectations theory, wrongly think they should be going up. If we understand Mises and time preference, however, we can see the true trend much more clearly.
The modern health insurance industry, a by-product of government regulation and tax policy, has led to a system in which the consumer of medical services doesn’t know the costs or final prices charged for services. Without a functioning system of price signals, prices cannot be contained.
In spite of its failure in the short term, the Scottish campaign exposed elite dread of decentralization while establishing a precedent that regions can decide for themselves to secede even without a nation-wide vote. The campaign also illustrates anew ongoing trends in the decline of the nation-state.
In this interview, Mark Thornton discusses his debate on the drug war at Oxford University and provides a view on how drug prohibition is viewed internationally.
Many modern states are little more than groupings of conquered nations. Breaking them up into smaller pieces is all for the best, and this would also ultimately lead to more free trade among nations since smaller states find it more difficult to sow the illusion of economic self-sufficiency.
