Taxes and Spending

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?

It's an illusion and a fraud that there is any stable system between productive capitalism and impoverishing socialism, argues Tibor Machan.

In an interview with Mises.org, a leading German classical liberal explains how the government botched unification.

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.

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

Edmund S. Phelps is no right-wing extremist. Quite the contrary, he stands at the center of Keynesian orthodoxy in economics. 

If we really want to take an opinion poll on taxes, the easiest way would be make them non-mandatory for one year. Give everyone the choice of paying them or not paying, with no penalties or rewards either way. What would happen? Washington would quickly have to close up shop.

Making splashy headlines, the National Marriage Project of Rutgers University reported this summer that marriage rates are at an historic low. Americans are waiting longer to get married and are choosing alternative arrangements to marriage. Data showing that divorce is on the decline turn out to be more complicated: people are taking fewer risks with marriage in the first place. In thirty years, the percentage of adults living as a partner in marriage has slipped from 68 to 56.