Professor Donald Boudreaux, recently installed as president of the Foundation for Economic Education, is off to a bad start. He offers some thoughts on immigration which to my mind succeed only in darkening counsel on this difficult topic.
The glories of private enterprise are most evident in the marvels we take for granted. For example, free enterprise created the marvelous, if much derided, institution of fast food. If there were a bureau of hamburger production, they'd be as scarce as budget cuts. As it is, citizens of every social and economic standing have daily access—in minutes—to a balanced meal denied to kings only two centuries ago.
Murray Rothbard had a remarkable ability to ask fundamental questions that others, even those within his own free-market camp, missed. After Rothbard touched an issue, it could never remain the same.
Middle-class incomes, the core of what we call the "standard of living," have been falling for more than two decades. Though people have known this intuitively, only recently have we heard much about it. Economists and the media have been conditioned to look for the ups and downs in the business cycle, meanwhile missing the single most ominous trend in American economic life.
To Renew America conveys a vivid sense of its author's unusual personality. But the vital core of the book lies elsewhere.
Newt Gingrich claims that "Alvin and Heidi Toffler have given us the key to viewing current disarray within the positive framwork of a dynamic, exciting future" .
The customary approach to immigration by libertarians has been a simple one.
