Corporate Welfare

This free-market system encouraged just the right mix of tradition and innovation.

Nothing is easier than to think of things that would require the performance of virtually unlimited labor in order to accomplish virtually zero result. Such is the nature of all job-creation programs.

Austrian economists like Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek opposed government intervention in the macroeconomy because that intervention leads to distorted relative prices and malinvestment.

The bonds will be backed by the usual way that the government gets money, which is to tax it or inflate it away.

Instead of trying to abolish failure via bailouts, we should let markets work, let failure run its course, and be so much the wiser for it.

What we need are real lasting tax cuts and a corresponding movement of spending out of government and into the private sector.

The economic power of private business organizations, even the so-called "private tyrannies," is justified by the fact that the use of economic power involves no initiation of force against any other person or their property.

By now we should all be ready to move beyond hysteria, get a grip on reality, and begin thinking about how to repeal everything the government has done during the past six weeks.

Even if GM itself was unable to survive bankruptcy, the resources freed from its grasp could be hugely beneficial to other automotive companies that make products that American consumers value more.

Presented to the Auburn University Economics Club, Auburn, Alabama, on 14 October 2008.