As the Cold War wound down, opinion elites discovered a new menace: “unfair trade practices.” These are the subsidies, protectionist tariffs, and various regulations and business practices other countries use, which hamper the export of American goods.
Last Christmas some cheeky MIT undergrads pulled one of their trademark “hacks,” publishing a report on the physics of Santa Claus. Using pseudo-precise estimates of the distance Santa must travel plus the number of stops he has to make, the MIT-ers announced (tongues firmly in cheeks) that he would be subject to accelerations of 60,000 G’s, squashing him flat. Sorry, Virginia; according to Newton there is no St. Nick.
According to official history, the 104th Congress doomed itself when it shut down the government to force its budget priorities on the president. People got up in arms and demanded that government be reopened. This taught the people and their representatives a valuable lesson. As much as we may complain, we truly need big government. Today, we all agree with the White House vow to never allow the government to shut down again.
The excuses given for big government take many forms. But NASA has surely come up with something unique in world history. They are trying to convince us that there is life on Mars, that we’d better speed our way there to find out more, and that’s why they need more of your money.
The big 2000 is approaching, and with it comes renewed interest in millennialism and the Book of Revelation. Everyone is looking for signs of something to happen, either cataclysmic or glorious. Will the Kingdom of God be established on earth? If so, what will it look like and who will be its prophet?
The furor over the supposed racism of Texaco’s management dramatizes, in miniature, the tragedy and danger of so-called civil-rights legislation. The Texaco story paints a vivid picture of what we’ve become: an economy distorted and abused by a racial spoils system, in which race is pitted against race, employees pitted against employers, and all power is held by federal bureaucrats and magistrates who “resolve” disputes by taking capitalists to the cleaners.
People who advocate tax-funded school vouchers for private schools frequently hail the G.I. Bill of Rights education vouchers for World War II veterans as a model. In truth, the G.I. Bill was a budget-busting middle-class entitlement scheme that had destructive effects on higher education, and set the stage for virtually all our current educational problems.
In October, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros spent $716 million to demolish decrepit housing projects. Before you cheer, consider this. The units won’t be replaced with a market system. More money will be spent on yet another socialistic program, this time to pay welfare recipients to move into private housing in suburbia and elsewhere.
Which is a greater cause of cultural and moral decline: the private sector or the government? Asked another way, which is doing more to promote a return to civilized social norms: the market or the central state? The answer highlights a dividing line between left and right.
The fame of the Austrian School in the 1920s and 1930s rests on its fierce resistance to the main intellectual currents of the time: welfarism, collectivism, and central planning. The Austrian economists battled these trends, made the case for the genuinely free society—necessarily based on private property and capitalism—and paid a heavy personal price.
