What’s the biggest fiscal problem facing the developed world? To an objective observer, the answer is a rising burden of government spending, caused by poorly designed entitlement programs, growing levels of dependency, and unfavorable demographics. The combination of…
Remember when you got your first paycheck, presumably when you were a teenager? If you’re like most people, you worked a bunch of hours and calculated how much money you expected to receive, only to then be disappointed when the check you received was for a much…
The budget deficit this year is projected to be significantly smaller than it has been in recent years and some of our statist friends claim that this shows the desirability and effectiveness of higher taxes. I’m not persuaded, mostly because our big long-run fiscal…
The unemployment rate in Washington DC is 8.5%, a point higher than the national average. Compared to the rest of the nation, the District is poverty and crime-ridden. Given these facts, you’d think the DC Council would welcome the nation’s largest employer to the…
Fifty years from now (assuming we haven’t suffered a Greek-style fiscal collapse), will we still enjoy our constitutional freedom of private gun ownership? Sometimes I’m pessimistic about what will happen because politically correct educators are brainwashing our…
I want government to successfully and rationally fight crime and stop terrorism. That’s a perfectly appropriate libertarian sentiment since protecting life, liberty, and property are among the few legitimate roles for government. But I don’t want to give bureaucrats…
Few know better than Americans living overseas the punitive and capricious nature of U.S. tax policy. Writing in today’s Wall Street Journal, law professor and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Colleen Graffy provided a clear and concise accounting of…
I sometimes make fun of Republicans for being the “Stupid Party,” but I get genuinely agitated when they’re the “Statist Party.” You can forgive someone for not being intelligent, after all, but it’s much harder to look the other way when they deliberately and…
I damned Obama with faint praise last year by asserting that he would never be able to make America as statist as France. My main point was to explain that the French people, notwithstanding their many positive attributes, seem hopelessly statist. At least that’s how…
Is Obamacare such a cluster-you-know-what that the law will self-destruct? Well, I’ve already explained why I’m optimistic about the possibility of turning Obamacare lemons into free-market lemonade. Simply stated, the law took a healthcare system that already was…