I am not dead, and that’s even though a part of our magnificent leviathan recently killed me. Our wonderful U.S. Postal Service—which as long as I have been living in this part of Queens has insisted that I live in another section of Queens—recently started stamping all my mail “deceased.” And yes it’s true that lots of people thought I was
Every once in a while, the truth somehow leaks out in Washington. For example, earlier this year Bush administration economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey got the boot. His political crime: He dared to suggest that the occupation of Iraq will cost upwards of $100 billion. In retrospect, it now seems his estimate was, if anything, on the conservative
The circus is coming to your town soon. Maybe, I’m getting old, but I just can’t get very excited about the clowns anymore. Yup, it’s political season again and those bothersome polls, still lusting for the votes that put or keep themselves and their pals in office, will be in our faces until the nonsense is over. Time for the same tired two
Lenin once dismissed the question of how socialism would work by pointing to the workings of the post office. Socialism, he said , means only to “To organize the whole economy on the lines of the postal service.” Well, I tried my best to avoid this pocket of socialism, but it was just unavoidable. I trained for it as though I would be in a life or
It was a familiar time. It was a time of a Republican administration waging an unpopular war. It was a war some Democrats said they opposed but seemed to do very little to stop. Inflation was starting to become a problem. America’s allies thought our president’s economic and political polices were flawed and they were often ridiculed.
One of the projects that President Obama’s close to trillion dollar stimulus package is designed to pay for will be a much delayed subway line in New York City. The line has been authorized and paid for by taxpayers time and again through bond issues and federal aid over more than 60 years. Yet the line is years away because of cost overruns and
Over the past 80 years or so governments have been expected to provide more and more social services. That means bigger and bigger bills for the taxpayers of this generation and generations unborn. Since governments almost constantly run in the red, they often resemble cocaine addicts desperately looking for the next fix. The fix, in the case of
The Free Market 17, no. 8 (August 1999) Those arguing that Wall Street and other major industries cannot survive without a strong regulatory structure because regulators keep markets fair must now answer a basic question: Who regulates the regulators? The query comes in the wake of a recent blatant conflict of interest at the Securities and
The Free Market 17, no. 11 (November 1999) Jesse Ventura, Governor of Minnesota, took a position that is extremely rare in state government. He said that neither the state nor the city nor any other unit of government should spend any money on funding yet another municipal ballpark or providing a taxpayer subsidy to professional ball teams and
Recently I attended a wake in Rego Park, Queens, a county which is unfortunately a part of New York City. It was the end of a wonderful kosher deli that was beloved by Jew and non-Jew alike: Ben’s Best. This terrific eatery might have died a natural death — many of its elderly patrons were moving to Florida and other less taxing climes than our
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.