[cross-posted at Austro-Athenian Empire and Liberty & Power]
My copy of Ed Stringham’s anthology Anarchy and the Law just arrived in the mail. (Amazon insists that the paperback isn’t available yet, but they’re wrong.)
Man wins $138,000 trip to space. Feds say he has to report that as income, and owe 25 grand in taxes. Man cancels trip. Somehow, the public good has been served.
CNN has the tragic report.
Let’s say that we could generate a graph with happiness in rows and wealth in columns. The curve slops perfectly upward. The more wealth you have, the happier you are; the less wealth, the less happy. The same goes for countries: poor countries are packed with people who are down in the dumps, whereas rich countries are overflowing with joyful souls.
While we’re revisiting the Industrial Revolution and the distortions of its historians, let me recommend Ralph Raico’s talk on the subject from the 2001 Mises University (MP3).
You might recall this story on the presiding judge in the I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial ordering classified and “sensitive” documents be made available to the public.
The government, famed for building bridges to nowhere, can’t replace a bridge blown down by Hurricane Katrina in four times the time required for a private company to replace its bridge just downriver from it, blown down at the same time. And the private company is a railroad, no less!
Ed Brown has received multiple felony convictions for income tax evasion. After trying to take up his case in court, he and his wife believe that federal agents will storm their 110 acre home, which is like a fortress complete with watch towers and its own supply of electricity should the government try to cut off the Browns’ power.
According to Lauren Canario,
Politicians love taxes like my cat loves cream. We just got another notice from the mayor’s minions about my cat, Kato. She’s a winsome black and white alley cat who could pass for an miscolored Siamese on a moonless night.
Who is Robert Higgs? No economic historian working today has done more to untangle the intellectual mess that the welfare-warfare state made of the 20th century. Higgs has a keen eye for detail, a passion for deep research, a sound theoretical outlook, and a flair for writing that makes his prose white hot.
