Big Government

Ryan McMaken and Chris Calton examine the many ways that government intervention has driven up home prices and made affordable homes harder to find. 

It seems that the EU leaders have decided on a new military spending spree. To pay for this, the EU will issue new war debt on top of its current high debt loads.

From nuclear war risks to overpriced pennies, USAID’s latest spending spree proves once again that government waste knows no bounds.

People commonly believe that our society couldn‘t survive without an all-powerful state making sure everything runs properly. Yet, if one takes a hard look at that belief, it soon becomes obvious that government destroys society.

Can Donald Trump and Elon Musk actually change the direction of government growth and spending? The proverbial Overton Window does not stay open very long.

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?

The Southern Reconstruction, while portrayed by progressives as virtuous northerners trying to rebuild the South, was actually an attempt to use state power to direct social and economic life there. 

President Trump has announced his intentions for the government to set up a sovereign wealth fund. However popular the idea might be, it runs headlong into the realities of economic calculation and would soon deteriorate another government slush fund.

In a recent New York Times column, Dartmouth professor Brooke Harrington claimed that Trump is undoing trust in our institutions while Franklin Roosevelt restored it. Clearly, Harrington doesn‘t know much about FDR—or Trump.

"The government has been throwing money at higher education, and the response has been that a lot more people are going to college that otherwise may have found other pathways."