Lew Rockwell recently mentioned Karl Marx. From the Portable Karl Marx , here is a Prussian police agent’s report on a visit to Marx’s apartment in London: In his private life he is a highly disorderly, cynical human being and a bad manager. He lives the life of a gypsy, of an intellectual Bohemian; washing, combing and changing his linen are
Lew Rockwell was right. In his article, “Where’s the Kelo Calamity?” he asks: “Did the nightmare begin? Some local governments that had been waiting for a ruling took advantage of the situation and pushed ahead with plans for confiscating properties. But far more important is the flurry of legislative activity that it has spawned. Twenty-five
Although the FairTax would eliminate the filing of all individual tax returns, the FairTax turns every business into a tax collector. Every small service business and every Internet business that does not currently collect state sales taxes will have to collect taxes for the federal government. Every doctor will now have to charge sales tax on his
The March issue of Reason magazine contains an interesting interview with the Fox News Channel’s Judge Andrew Napolitano about government and his new book Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws . Here are portions of a couple of key exchanges: Reason: How do you feel about Alberto Gonzales as attorney general?
A reader of my recent article, “The Curse of the Withholding Tax,” received, directly from Milton Friedman, this quote from his memoirs, Two Lucky People (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 123), about his role in the withholding tax: “Far more important, without a system of current collection, it would have been impossible to collect the amount of
It would take another article (here is the original and discussion on it) to respond to all the bogus claims of the FairTax supporters. However, I would like to settle once and for all, as simply as possible, the dispute about the FairTax percentage—whether it is 23 percent or 30 percent. I live in Florida. The sales tax rate is 6 percent (some
A version of this review of Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle over School Choice by Clint Bolick (Washington D.C.: Cato Institute, 2003) appeared in the Journal of Libertarian Studies 18.2 Voucher Wars: Waging the Legal Battle over School Choice is the story of the twelve-year legal battle for school choice that culminated in the 2002 Zelman
The Republicans are expanding the welfare state almost as much as they are increasing the warfare state. In a recent report from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services , chief actuary Richard Foster predicts that the federal government will soon be paying for half the cost of all health care in the United States. A major contributing
Did you have to write out a check to the IRS for $5,581 this past April 15? If you had to do such a thing next year, would you think of it as your civic duty or would you consider it a crime that only the government could get away with? A Typical Taxpayer This figure of $5,581 is not an arbitrary one. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, real
Since my recent article on the evils of the withholding tax, I have been inundated with e-mails by supporters of the “ FairTax ,” including a request that I endorse “The Fair Tax Act of 2005” currently pending in the Congress. But like the calls for “fair trade” instead of “free trade,” the FairTax is a fraud because it is based on the fallacy
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.