On Monday, January 27, 2024, after one week in office, the Trump administration’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a memorandum announcing a freeze on potentially trillions of dollars in federal grants, loans, and other financial assistance programs, effective at 5 PM the following day. Specifically exempted from the freeze were Social Security benefits, Medicare, and grants provided to individuals.

Today would have been Murray Rothbard’s ninety-ninth birthday. He was an unforgettable friend, whose immense knowledge of many different fields was unsurpassed in my experience. In a lecture on the Austrian theory of the business cycle, he mentioned the common objection that the expansion of bank credit might have no effect if investors anticipated trouble. After the lecture, I asked whether Mises had answered this point.

An August 17, 2024 article, at oilprice.com, entitled, “A New Era for Nuclear Power in the US” describes US government funding and intervening to reopen closed or closing nuclear power electric generating plants (nuclear) to support their green transition policies from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

News feeds are stuffed full of reports and opinions about President Trump’s tariff increases on Mexico, Canada, China, and the EU. Then the add-on story is about the tax cut legislation—extending President Trump’s tax cuts to the coming years.

The media is spinning the story as a political hot potato: can tariff increases make up for the future revenue losses from extending the income tax reductions from President Trump’s first term?

This is a false scenario, and a dangerous one. It puts our standard of living at a critical crossroads. Here are the missing road signs.

In his book Omnipotent Government, Ludwig von Mises traces the shift in Europe from individualism to state omnipotence, highlighting the disastrous effects of empowering government to run every aspect of social and economic life:

In his February 3 Executive Order, President Trump directed his minions to begin planning for establishment of a “Sovereign Wealth Fund” that he originally touted in a speech to the Economic Club of New York last September. The fund would be on the order of $2 trillion, investing in things like manufacturing hubs, defense, and medical research.