Two very tragic legal cases.

This trend is only likely to get worse.

Every so often, I share polling data from other nations that is either encouraging or puzzling. Looking through the archives, here are some memorable examples. *Americans are more libertarian than Europeans. *On the other hand, the French support spending cuts by a 4-1 margin. *More than 90 percent of Greeks and Italians see government as an obstacle to business. […]

Winners of corporate tax competition, how the U.S. tax codes holds us back, the latest data on the superiority of economic freedom, and much more.

In the pre-World War I era, the fiscal burden of government was very modest in North America and Western Europe. Total government spending consumed only about 10 percent of economic output, most nations were free from theplague of the income tax, and the value-added tax hadn’t even been invented. Today, by contrast, every major nation has an onerous income […]

Part of my job is to educate people about free markets and fiscal policy. In some cases, that means providing information and analysis to those already sympathetic to limited government. There are many people who like the idea of lower tax burdens, for instance, but they may not have given much thought to the interaction […]

One of the reasons why this blog is called International Liberty is that the world is a laboratory, with some nations (such as France) showing why statism is a mistake, other jurisdictions (such as Hong Kong) showing that freedom is a key to prosperity, and other countries (such as Sweden) having good and bad features. […]

The latest video from our Economics 101 Series tackles poverty, an issue frequently used to pull heart-strings in support of big government policies. But as the video shows, big government redistribution schemes are not making the problem better, and are likely making it worse. As the following chart from the video demonstrates, poverty was steadily […]

The so-called War on Poverty has failed. Making government bigger and creating more federal redistribution programs has been bad news for taxpayers. But the welfare state also has been a disaster for the less fortunate, creating a flypaper effect that makes it difficult for people to lead independent and self-reliant lives. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video shows how the poverty rate was falling after World War II — but then stagnated once the federal government got involved.

The latest “Economics 101” video released today by the Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation (CF&P), narrated by Hadley Heath of the Independent Women’s Forum, calls for restoring economic freedom to reduce poverty. Entitled, “Free Markets, Not Redistribution, Is Best Way to Reduce Poverty,” the video puts poverty in perspective and shows how government redistribution programs perpetuate rather than alleviate the problem.