Princess Diana’s navy velvet dress, auctioned at Christie’s in New York City, went to the highest bidder for $200,000. Despite explosive media attention given to the sale, the bidder’s identity and even nationality is unknown. The auction house, of course, is sworn to secrecy as a matter of contract.
Among the tax discussions on Capitol Hill this year are the proposed changes in the 80-year-old inheritance tax. Part of the Republican tax plan calls for an increase in the estate tax exemption from $600,000 to $1,000,000, with considerably larger exemptions for farmers and other small business owners. The less generous Clinton Administration proposal would provide low interest rates on estate taxes paid in installments.
This summer, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it had effectively decontaminated dioxin-laced soil from what was once the community of Times Beach, Missouri. But while the dirt of this site may now be certifiably clean, it will take much more than an incinerator to decontaminate the toxic EPA policies which destroyed the town. The experience of Seveso, Italy, clearly demonstrates that it was not necessary for EPA to destroy Times Beach in order to save it.
As recently as 50 years ago, economists regarded the vitality of the economy as consonant with its ability to produce things people want (and would pay for). Today, the economy has been redefined into something called the Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. It measures all goods and services brought to market in a given year. But is it really an accurate measure of how well an economy is serving people’s needs? Here are some outlandish ways the GDP can be boosted.
Free trade and peace go together; protectionism is the handmaiden of war. These were key teachings of the early classical economists, as well as the Austrians. Consistent libertarians have never doubted it. But recently the theory has come under fire from all sides—and led to dangerous coalitions pushing for the worst of all worlds, autarky and military belligerence.
For ages, man’s right to exploit the living world—to use it for his purposes—went unquestioned. Trees were for lumber, crops for harvesting, animals for eating and skinning as well, of course, as for companionship. When not consumed directly, the products into which human labor transformed living things found their way to the market. Nothing seemed more, well, natural.
Making lots of money is evil say the politically correct. It’s sleazy, socially destructive, and almost always immoral, unless profits are given away to left-wing lobbying groups. Typical of this trendy disgust with getting rich through capitalistic means is Socially Responsible Investing (SRI), a nebulous set of investing standards embracing a host of “progressive” political causes.
Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency presume to protect us from all sorts of supposed evils. But in doing so, no bureaucrats, save the tax collectors, are more vicious in their trampling of property rights. For example, they have made life miserable for people who own auto salvage and parts companies, and the drivers who depend on them.
For fifteen tedious years, Republicans demanded that Congress give the president the “line-item veto.” Reaganites concocted this policy gimmick as a diversionary tactic. It allowed them to blame Congress when the budget wouldn’t balance and spending soared. If only the president could eliminate pork, line by line, spending wouldn’t be perpetually out of control.
