It Didn’t Begin with LBJ: How the US Became a Transfer Society

Terry L. Anderson and Peter J. Hill’s fascinating account traces the decline of the American constitutional framework from its origins in laissez-faire individualism to its current state of redistributive collectivism. Viewing the evolution as a series of legal developments motivated by ever greater financial incentives to involve the federal government, they highlight the following pivotal cases: (1) Marbury v.

Praxeology and Animals

Many academic fields are devoted to reconstructing reality, to make reality fit their socialist ideals better. Those who wish to reconstruct reality argue, for example, that there is no reason why some animals should be regarded as “wild.” They argue that we should seek “new ways to think and act in a world dominated everywhere by human power and activity” and that there is no reason to exclude the animal world from that enterprise.

Public Goods, Government Transfers, and Lawsuits for Clean Air and Climate Mitigation

Since the 1930s New Deal and the 1960s Great Society, the US federal budget has shifted from providing pubic goods to distributing transfers (in the form of both spending and lending) to favored groups, a continually metastasizing shift that has now created a federal budgetary and debt crisis. It has also allowed politicians to perfect the fine art of buying votes by awarding federal transfers to select voter groups as a means to winning elections.

War and Inflation

You can line up 100 professional war historians and political scientists to talk about the 20th century, and not one is likely to mention the role of the Fed in funding US militarism. And yet the story of central banking is one step removed from the story of atom bombs and death camps. It is the most important priority of the state to keep its money machine hidden behind a curtain. Anyone who dares pull the curtain back is accused of every manner of intellectual crime. We must end the conspiracy of silence on this issue.
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