I took part in a thirty-minute online Skype debate for PBS on income inequality, and they boiled it down to the 4:44 youtube video embedded below. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I said economic growth was the key. I don’t want to re-slice the pie. I want to make it bigger. I […]
read more...I’m getting sick of the debt downgrade issue, so let’s shift to another topic. The title to this post may seem like a joke, but Europe’s bizarre courts have decided to trample the property rights of landlords by ruling that tenants have a “right” to satellite TV and therefore cannot be barred from installing dishes. […]
read more...As the national debate shifts away from the immediate issues surrounding the debt ceiling, members of Congress should focus now on the fundamental purpose of government in a free society. Current excesses in federal spending have resulted largely due to the continued expansion of government into areas outside its original charter. One way in which […]
read more...I’m often amazed at how the political class concocts new rights that can only be fulfilled by trampling on genuine freedoms. In a previous post, I mocked Finland for deciding that broadband access was a human right (which presumably means Finns were being oppressed before Al Gore invented the Internet). Another post sarcastically noted that […]
read more...I’ve beaten up on Newt Gingrich for his views on global warming and his attack on the Ryan budget plan, but I’m completely on his side in the faux controversy about whether it is racist to call Barack Obama the “food stamp president.” This story from ABC News should worry everybody, regardless of whether the […]
read more...I posted a joke about this last year, but this video makes the point much more effectively. When you tax and redistribute income or grades, you penalize those who achieve and work hard. Kudos to the college kids who put this together. The volume sometimes is inadequate, but the overall message comes through loud and […]
read more...I may have to stop being a New York Yankees fan. The state of my birth is a national embarrassment. People in the Empire State are national champions in the contest to rip off their fellow citizens according to analysis from USA Today. West Virginia, however, is the biggest deadbeat state if handouts are compared […]
read more...This story from the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal makes the point, excerpted below, that the welfare state subsidizes dysfunctional behavior. But read the story to understand how big government destroys lives, ruins families, and creates inter-generational poverty. A very powerful, albeit very depressing article. It’s basically the American version of this grim news report from […]
read more...Here’s a passage from a speech by a well-known political figure, but it wasn’t Ronald Reagan, Ron Paul, or Milton Friedman. The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief […]
read more...This isn’t a video produced by an anti-welfare group. It’s not even from the United States. Instead, you’re looking at a straight news clip from England that unintentionally offers a very powerful example of how welfare saps initiative, creates dependency, subsidizes irresponsibility, and destroys the human spirit.
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