The Virginia legislature has been toying with the idea of curbing or even abolishing sales taxes. The idea comes in response to merchants who fear that they are losing because of the availability of untaxed goods purchased over the web. Whether big changes in the tax code happen this year or five years from now, clearly the battle over net taxation has just begun.
The Republican Congress, fearful of taking on a Democratic president who plays the class-warfare card, again has failed tens of millions of small American businesses and families: The death tax lives. And tens of thousands of small businesses are at risk as long as it survives.
Statism has so permeated our culture that even the games we play reflect the popular belief in omnipotent government. For example, one of the most successful computer games of all time is the SimCity series, which requires the player to plan a city in exhaustive detail from uninhabited terrain. Over five million copies of the game have been sold, and each version to date has reflected a government-centered view of the world.
We could have another on our hands if the bureaucrats get involved in regulating prices again.
OPEC is restricting production, but it's domestic taxes and regulations that keep gas and oil prices high.
In the last several decades, step by step, the system has become Diocletianized.
If you want your phone number unlisted, you have to pay for the privilege--a typical bureaucratic inversion of the prevailing market rule.
That Nasa is a boondoggle and a socio-economic drain should be obvious to all. How does this bureaucracy continue to get away with it?
A common misconception in popular thinking about business is that companies need to be helped along and supported by government. If a community fails to help business, it is said, it will miss out on jobs and prosperity. We see this happening across the country. Cities use public funds to build sports stadiums and arenas. States issue bonds and provide tax incentives to large corporations to entice them to locate in specific areas. Politicians then turn to the community and campaign for reelection based on bringing home the corporate bacon. This legal plunder is disguised as "urban renewal" or "community development."
Only 1 in 10 taxpayers are willing to send money to the presidential election fund. What does that tell us, asks Lew Rockwell, about public sentiment concerning government?
