Sometimes you find support for capitalism and small government in some rather unexpected places. I was surprised, for instance, when I found out that Gene Simmons, the lead singer for Kiss, stated that, “Capitalism is the best thing that ever happened to human beings. The welfare state sounds wonderful but it doesn’t work.” That’s pretty […]
read more...Political cartoonists like Michael Ramirez and Chuck Asay are effective because they convey so much with images. But we need more than clever cartoons if we’re going to educate the general population about how government harms the economy and undermines freedom. And that’s why Thomas Sowell is so invaluable. He’s one of the nation’s top […]
read more...With many European nations already in the midst of a fiscal crisis caused by excessive government, and with most other industrialized nations heading down the same path thanks to aging populations and poorly designed entitlement programs, this would be a good time for supposed experts to propose ways to rein in the welfare state. But […]
read more...Remember Julia, the mythical moocher created by the Obama campaign to show the joys of government dependency? As illustrated by this Ramirez cartoon, Julia symbolizes the entitlement mentality. Unfortunately, there are many real-life Julias. I wrote a couple of years ago about Olga, a Greek woman who petulantly believed that government was responsible for her […]
read more...I’ve written and pontificated about the problem of government-created dependency and how the welfare state traps people in poverty. I also shared this dramatic chart showing how redistribution programs create shockingly high implicit marginal tax rates for those with modest incomes. But when a liberal writer for the New York Times basically comes to the […]
read more...Here’s a remarkable chart showing that we spend about $60,000 on various welfare programs for every poor household in America. And what are we getting for that giant expenditure of money? Well, as this other chart shows, our progress in the fight against poverty came to a screeching halt right about the time that the […]
read more...It’s not often that I read something by Paul Krugman and think, “Good point, I hope he’s correct.” After all, I had to correct Krugman’s inaccurate analysis of Estonia, and also point out the errors in what he wrote about the United Kingdom. And I also noted mistakes he made when writing about Canada and […]
read more...In a recent post about Brian Ross and the despicable behavior of ABC News, I included examples of what I categorized as deliberate and accidental media bias. Here’s a good (or perhaps I should say bad) example of accidental bias, demonstrating how statist premises get incorporated into news reports. Here’s how the Associated Press began […]
read more...I’m not a big fan of welfare programs, in part because I sympathize with taxpayers (check out these outrageous examples of waste) but mostly because redistribution programs subsidize poverty and trap people in lives of despair. But as I wrote in 2010, the most perverse form of welfare is when governments give handouts to Islamo-fascist […]
read more...Supporters of individual liberty and national sovereignty have been skeptical of the United Nations, and with good reason. With the support of statists such as George Soros, the U.N. pushes for crazy ideas such as global taxation and global currency. But there’s another international bureaucracy, also funded by American tax dollars, that is even more […]
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