London was flooded recently with hundreds of farmers, protesting the recent changes made by the Labour government to inheritance tax. Thousands of farmers feel that their generational culture is truly at stake with the changes to inheritance tax. The Labour government claims that the changes to inheritance tax will affect very few farmers.

I was a collegiate athlete 50 years ago in a National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I track and field program (University of Tennessee) and we were governed by strict rules on what kind of compensation we could have for our sport. According to NCAA rules, our compensation was limited to scholarships for tuition, room and board, and $15 a month for laundry. Any payments outside of those parameters could land a program in trouble with the NCAA.

Santa Claus is a magical and benevolent figure who is able to produce and distribute gifts to children every Christmas Eve at no cost to the recipients. But many economists and people in the general public mistake the political state for Santa Claus for failure to recognize the nature of government and one of the most basic rules of economics—a government has no resources of its own and cannot “give” with one hand what has not first been taken by the other.