“Because Science!” has become a popular refrain. I’m not just talking about climate studies. Headline writers love to say this.

A couple of months ago, I thought I did something meaningful by sharing six separate examples of the International Monetary Fund pressuring sub-Saharan African nations to impose higher tax burdens. This was evidence, I suggested, that the IMF had a disturbing agenda of bigger government for the entire region.

“Freedom from want” is one of the most frequently invoked notions of freedom in our time. However, it is a bogus freedom that politicians and socialists offer to lull people into accepting policies that destroy true freedom. Freedom from want has been most loudly advocated in this century by those who favored removing almost all limits from government power.

A careful reading of the quotations that Hayek left us upon his death on explains what is, in his opinion, the ultimate and definitive test of whether or not someone is a true economist.

(The photo below) Friedrich A. Hayek arriving for one of the morning sessions at the second Austrian Economics conference at the University of Hartford in June 1975. The conference was sponsored by the Institute for Humane Studies, with Don Armentano as the conference director.

A recent report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute highlights the cost of America’s regulatory state.

According to CEI:

The estimate for regulatory compliance and economic effects of federal intervention is $1.9 trillion annually for purposes of comparison with federal spending and other economic metrics. This estimate was compiled using available federal government data and reports, in context with contemporary studies.

Secrecy is a knavery entitlement program. Thanks to the ludicrously named Congressional Accountability Act of 1995, victims of alleged sexual harassment by members of Congress receive secret taxpayer-funded settlements. That means constituents rarely learn that their tax dollars underwrite their representatives’ allegedly roaming hands. More than $17 million has been spent in payoffs to congressional employees who filed workplace grievances.