U.S. History

Recorded 10/16/2004 at Radical Scholarship: The Guerrilla Movement for Liberty.

It was capitalism that finally ended the Great Depression, not FDR’s harebrained cartel, wage-increasing, unionizing, and welfare state expanding policies.

In a famous essay written in 1906, Werner Sombart asked, Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? Whether one agrees with his analysis, his premise cannot be disputed: 

It was capitalism that finally ended the Great Depression, writes Tom DiLorenzo, not FDR's hair-brained cartel, wage-increasing, unionizing, and welfare state expanding policies. 

Adams suggests nine reform items to tame the tax monster: 1) tear down the spy system, 2) establish a crime for tax extortion as well as a civil action for damages, 3) establish a civil action for damages for tortious tax administration including: malicious tax investigations, extortions, leaked information and grand jury abuse, 4) have all federal tax districts coincide with congressional districts and provide for the recall of district directors, 5) adjudicate tax disputes like any other debt, 6) decriminalize the tax law, 7) make congressional representatives and federal judges immune from the IRS, 8) make our federal tax system indirect as much as possible, and 9) another reform measure that may take the forefront in tax reform is a national consumption tax, like a sales tax.

A tariff set the stage for the American Civil War. The quarrel between the North and the South was a fiscal quarrel, not a war over slavery. The tariff of 1828 was called the tariff of abomination. Nullification was a strong argument to void unconstitutional federal laws.

It is unlikely, argue William Anderson and Candice Jackson, that Lay is guilty of criminal activity, especially in the sales of Enron stock.

Just when the supposed threat of disinflation passed, now comes another frightful creation from the fearsome flation family: stagflation. Sean Corrigan explains.

Howard Ruff has returned with a new book, Safely Prosperous or Really Rich: Choosing Your Personal Financial Heaven, and another recommendation to buy gold. Hey, it was lucky for him in 1975, maybe it will work for him again to sell three million books.