Back in 2010, I shared some wise words from Walter Williams and Theodore Dalrymple about how society can become unstable when people figure they can “vote themselves money.” On a related note, I shared the famous “riding in the wagon” cartoons in 2011 and the “Danish party boat” image in 2014. Both of these posts highlighted the danger that […]

Why is President Obama so fixated on a class-warfare agenda of higher taxes on the rich and government dependency for the poor? Is it because a tax-the-rich agenda is good politics, as determined by clever pollsters who have tapped into the collective mind of American voters (and as demonstrated by this cartoon)? Or is the President ideologically committed to […]

Why do statists make so many mistakes with data? Paul Krugman, for instance, has butchered numbers when writing about fiscal policy in nations such as France, Estonia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. But Krugman isn’t alone. We also have Thomas Piketty, who was lionized by the left after publication of Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Ever since his book was published, various […]

Back in 2012, I shared a sadly amusing image about how the modern political process has degenerated into two wolves and a sheep voting what to have for lunch. I was making an argument in that column against majoritarianism (and that is a critical issue, as explained in this video), but there’s also a very important moral component […]

I haven’t spent much time writing about Thomas Piketty’s inequality book for the simple reason that my goal is economic liberty, not equality. That being said, I think that Piketty is fundamentally misguided even if the goal is helping the poor. Simply stated, long-run growth is the best way of reducing poverty and boosting living standards. […]

The political left obviously hopes that it can score political points by pitching some Americans against others with a campaign based on income inequality and class warfare taxation. Is there any merit to this approach? Are the less fortunate suffering because some are succeeding? And would more government alleviate this problem, to the extent it actually […]

The President’s new budget has been unveiled. There are lots of provisions that deserve detailed attention, but I always look first at the overall trends. Most specifically, I want to see what’s happening with the burden of government spending. And you probably won’t be surprised to see that Obama isn’t imposing any fiscal restraint. He wants spending to […]

One of the many differences between advocates of freedom and supporters of statism is how they view “rights.” Libertarians, along with many conservatives, believe in the right to be left alone and not molested by government. This is sometimes referred to in the literature as “negative liberty,” which is just another way of saying “the absence […]

If you want to know why the left is wrong about income inequality, you need to watch this Margaret Thatcher video. In just a few minutes, the “Iron Lady” explains how some – perhaps most – statists would be willing to reduce income for the poor if they could impose even greater damage on the rich. […]

When I posted a video about “libertarian porn” back in 2010, readers presumably were either relieved or disappointed that there was no nudity. I may get the same reaction today, because we’re going to have a discussion – but only G-rated – about what our British friends are referring to as “poverty porn.” More specifically, that’s the term […]