Mises Daily Thursday by Gabriel Openshaw:
The reality on the ground is that states with more libertarian free market policies enjoy better results: greater median incomes, a more equitable distribution, less poverty, greater success for minorities and immigrants, and higher overall levels of happiness and well-being
Mises Daily Wednesday by Peter St. Onge:
“Buy land — they’re not making any more!” is an old investing chestnut, and a common sense one to boot. Economically, it’s also completely false.
David Friedman once said that “government can’t even give anything away.” Given how much of electoral competition consists of promises to give people things, that is a striking indictment of government.
Unfortunately, it is all-too-commonly true. Government dollars (ultimately from citizens’ pockets) frequently benefit people other than those they target. Further, they also provide different goods and services than intended.
It has recently come to the attention of the media that Auburn University reversed an initial decision to eliminate the public administration major from the school’s curriculum in 2013. This reversal came as the result of resistance from Auburn’s athletic department. Apparently, the public administration major is looked down upon by much of the school’s faculty. But its popularity among athletes, specifically Auburn’s football team, is what looks to have kept it afloat.
James Fenimore Cooper widely influenced American literature. However, one of his books--The American Democrat, a civics primer--gets scant attention. Given that Cooper was born (September 15) so close to Constitution Day, it merits revisiting now.
Cooper defended the limited government the Constitution authorized, because political power not tightly controlled would be abused. In particular, he emphasized private property rights as necessary to liberty, our “right of self-government.”
The term “managed care” entered the common lexicon in the 1990s, when contracted arrangements between physicians and hospitals on the one hand, and insurance entities on the other, became standard means to try to control healthcare expenditures. The origin of the concept is frequently credited to Dr. Paul Ellwood and his influential Jackson Hole Group, who introduced the idea in the early 1970s.
The greater the economic freedom, the wealthier and happier the people.
From minimum-wage laws to higher progressive taxation to greater unionization to larger welfare programs to more regulation, left liberals demand a stronger and more economically active central government. Advocates of laissez-faire, on the other hand, favor smaller government, less regulation, lower taxes, and greater individual opportunity and property rights.
But which economic policy approach actually yields the best results?
