Taxes and Spending

The true lessons of Thanksgiving are that private property, the market economy, and personal responsibility lead to prosperity, while government intervention makes us all poorer.

Bernie Sanders and other advocates for more taxes like to note that income tax rates hit 90 percent in the 1950s. What they leave out is that few ever paid such rates and total tax revenues were about the same then as today.

When French President Francois Hollande declared this week that France is "at war," this could only possibly have been news to people who weren't paying attention. Of course, France is at war.

This week, the dangers of the authoritarian PC culture was driven to the forefront of the national conversation by students at Mizzou. Fortunately, Mises Scholars launched a pre-emptive strike against PC and the degenerating university system at last weekend's Mises Circle in Phoenix. 

Numerous pundits within the Conservative media are telling us that the military is facing cuts of historic proportions. In fact, military spending remains at near historic highs and Obama has spent more tax money on national defense than Reagan did during the Cold War.

Social Security has never involved legally-binding contracts between the government and those who allegedly “pay in.” Nevertheless, the government has long pretended that there is a contract, except when it gets in the way of raising taxes to keep the program afloat.

No amount of fantasizing can make fundamental economic realities go away, no matter how much we put our faith in central banks, government regulation, or technologies of the future.

It wasn't long ago that the pundits were talking about Venezuela's "economic miracle" which had proved all the anti-socialist naysayers wrong. But with soaring unemployment, inflation, and deficits, the Venezuelan people are unfortunately having to pay for years of ignoring economic reality.

It was a big week for Bernie Sanders's brand of socialism, and millions of Americans already agree with him. Thanks to unquestioning acceptance of wild claims about the success of socialism in Europe, many Americans are now wishing for some European-style socialism themselves.

Nordic countries prospered in spite of the Scandinavian model, not because of it.