To put it mildly, the Federal Reserve has a dismal track record. It bears significant responsibility for almost every major economic upheaval of the past 100 years, including the Great Depression, the 1970s stagflation, and the recent financial crisis. Perhaps the…
Daily Analysis
British Business Writer Explains: Thanks to Tax Competition and Tax Havens, the Greed of the Political Class Is Being Constrained
Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of tax competition because politicians are less likely to misbehave if the potential victims of plunder have the ability to escape across borders. Here is an excerpt from a superb article by Allister Heath, one of the U.K.’s…
Since When Does the United Nations Rather than Congress Get to Declare War for the United States?
I’m not a foreign policy expert, so perhaps I’m missing something, but a quick glance at the Constitution reveals that Congress has the power to declare war, as specified in Article I, Section VIII. Nobody else has that power, not even the President. Notwithstanding…
The “McDonald’s Test” for Budget Cutting
I thought my post about budget cuts earlier today, mocking the biased language of the Washington Post, was clever. But I’m definitely an amateur blogger. Check out these posts, at Powerline Blog and Arizona Economics. These guys put me to shame with very clever…
Bush Was Not a Conservative
There’s an interesting debate in the blogosphere about whether President George W. Bush was a conservative (here’s a good summary of the discussion, along with lots of links, though I especially like this analysis since it cites my work.). I’ve already explained that…
Does the Washington Post Really Think “Slash” Is the Best Way to Describe a Plan to Trim $6 Billion out of $3.8 Trillion?
Washington is Fantasy Land. Only in this corrupt city can you turn increases into cuts merely by increasing spending by less than previously planned. And almost every politician magically knows how to transform “spending” into “investment.” So I’m used to Orwellian…
How Government Condemned Us to Dirty Clothes by Mandating Sub-Standard Washing Machines
Sam Kazman of the Competitive Enterprise Institute has a withering critique of dumb government policies that have taken away our freedom to buy low-cost and effective washing machines and instead forced us to buy expensive machines that don’t do a good job of cleaning…
A Perfect Michael Moore T-Shirt, Ideal for Christmas or Birthdays
It’s a long time until Christmas, but this clever t-shirt I saw linked on Instapundit is going to be near the top of my list. And unlike the Ben Bernanke toilet paper, this gift will be visible to everyone you see, not just people who visit your bathroom. On the other…
Do You Have a Right to Be a Bum on Public Property?
I confess to mixed feelings on this type of issue. If taxpayers are financing sidewalks, does that mean anybody has a right to use them for any purpose, at any time? Here’s a blurb from the People’s Republic of San Francisco. San Francisco police officers have started…
The Billion Dollar-o-Gram
Some of these numbers are a bit dodgy, and some of the assumptions are pathetically flawed (more spending by government leads to less poverty being a clear example of faulty thinking), but this comparison of big numbers is very interesting. I now know, for instance,…