The Republican leadership and their advisers are confirming Murray Rothbard’s doubts. Writing in the Washington Post, Rothbard noted the vast ideological divide between the voters and those who control the Republican Congress. His prediction: the leadership will defend the old order of government control even as its legitimacy is unraveling. The revolution was betrayed, he said, even before the Republicans took control.
The intellectual achievements of Murray Newton Rothbard (1926-1995)—eminent scholar and friend—are monumental. He is the author of 25 books and thousands of article in scholarly and popular journals. His work covers the entire spectrum of the social sciences: pure economic theory, history, sociology, philosophy, religion, languages, and politics.
How can business comply with the Americans With Disabilities Act? It can’t. The ADA has created an inescapable trap for companies, a bottomless pit for liberty and property, and an unremitting excuse for harassment and control.
Four in five Americans opposed the $50 billion Mexican bailout, but they were powerless to stop it. When the central bank says it’s in charge—as it does in every financial upheaval of this magnitude—we are supposed to hold our tongues and leave it to the experts, even if their actions generate only uncertainty and volatility.
After two years of pretending to be for free trade, the Clinton administration, backed by the Republican leadership in Congress, finally ‘fessed up. In their dealings with China and Mexico, they shredded two centuries of economic wisdom, repudiated every principle of sensible economic relations, and kicked taxpayers and consumers in the teeth.
If you thought the end of the Cold War would mean the death of “defense” socialism, or even the shrinking of the massive Pentagon bureaucracy that has been choking off and diverting the productive sector of the economy since World War II, then think again.
Americans are rightfully skeptical of “economic development.” From India to Egypt to Brazil, it has meant Aswan Dam-size government projects that have failed to raise living standards while generating pollution and cultural instability.
Performance budgeting (PB) is the newest strategy to make the public sector work. Yet as with other similar strategies, PB is fundamentally flawed. Without a system of profit and loss, a bureaucracy not only has trouble motivating its employees; it can’t determine the value of what they are doing in the first place.
Steve Stockman, among the best of Washington’s freshmen Congressmen, holds a daily prayer session that staff members attend voluntarily. Last year, nobody could have stopped it. But thanks to the “Contract With America,” Congress now has to comply with the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The events of March 1995 could be a watershed in international monetary affairs. Beginning with the Bretton Woods agreement 50 years ago, the Federal Reserve system has been the global monetary regulator. The collapse of the dollar is a no-confidence vote that may have brought this role to an end.
