News feeds are stuffed full of reports and opinions about President Trump’s tariff increases on Mexico, Canada, China, and the EU. Then the add-on story is about the tax cut legislation—extending President Trump’s tax cuts to the coming years.

The media is spinning the story as a political hot potato: can tariff increases make up for the future revenue losses from extending the income tax reductions from President Trump’s first term?

This is a false scenario, and a dangerous one. It puts our standard of living at a critical crossroads. Here are the missing road signs.

In his book Omnipotent Government, Ludwig von Mises traces the shift in Europe from individualism to state omnipotence, highlighting the disastrous effects of empowering government to run every aspect of social and economic life:

In his February 3 Executive Order, President Trump directed his minions to begin planning for establishment of a “Sovereign Wealth Fund” that he originally touted in a speech to the Economic Club of New York last September. The fund would be on the order of $2 trillion, investing in things like manufacturing hubs, defense, and medical research.

Beyond some rudimentary facts, very little is available in English about the life of J.B. Say.1  He was born in Lyons, France, to middle-class Huguenot parents, and spent most of his early years in Geneva and London.

[The Lecturer’s Art: Gems of American History by Walter A. McDougall. Encounter Books, 2025. xxii + 291 pp.]

It is difficult to find a seemingly more unobjectionable term that “equality” is the modern West and America. Equality is often understood to be an unqualified good and part of the American creed: “all men are created equal.”

I’m all in favor of a thorough and public audit of the US’s gold reserves. This includes the gold, not only at Fort Knox, but also at the other gold storage facilities at West Point, Denver, and the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Ron Paul was right when, in 2011, he tried to force the federal government to be transparent about its gold holdings.