Big Government

Poverty, welfare and reason.

From the 1930s through the 1980s, government claimed it could innovate better than private markets. That' s what the boondoggles like TVA, Nasa, and Semitech were all about. Hardly anyone believes that anymore, so the rationale for government regulation of technology has changed. It now concerns such vagaries as fairness and wise resource use.

Created in the name of free trade, and even backed by some free traders, the World Trade Organization has become what its fine-print promised it would  be: a vehicle for economic planning.

Garet Garrett wrote in 1932, "Mass delusions are not rare. They salt the human story." Indeed, mass delusions are no more apparent than in the realm of public policy and especially in the faith people have in their government to carry out functions designed to promote the public good. How else to describe the persistent belief that government is a good steward of resources of any kind?

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 their media flunkies. "The taxpayers shouldn't have to foot the bill for new stadiums," said Ventura.

A Fed official dreams up a new idea to crack down on currency hoarding. (Article by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.)

How a credit-driven expansion has fed the stock-market boom. (Analysis by Sean Corrigan)

The system is morally bankrupt, but there is only one means to change it: eliminate the redistributive state. (Column by Tibor Machan)  

How the lottery is being used to swell the public sector, and why the gambling industry is going along. 

Regulators claim to guarantee equality of  information, but no market can live up to that standard.