Socialism

Power and Knowledge: Socialist and Militarist Calculation Problems

by Joseph R. Stromberg February 1, 2015

Economist Ludwig von Mises argued (1920) that real prices arise only from exchanges of privately owned goods; having abolished such prices, socialist systems could never calculate rationally. Economist F.A. Hayek agreed with Mises that central planning would produce poverty and totalitarianism, but made the use of knowledge in society the central weakness of socialist calculation. In his view (1945), ...

Yes, Virginia, There is No Political Santa Claus

by Richard M. Ebeling December 29, 2014

At a time of the year when gift giving and charitable good spirit fills the air, please allow me to be the one who rains on the parade: “Yes, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus!” I don’t mean the Santa who comes down the chimney with toys for every girl and boy. This is the Santa who really is Mom ...

TGIF: Free-Market Socialism

by Sheldon Richman November 14, 2014

Libertarians are individualists. But since individualist has many senses, that statement isn’t terribly informative. Does it mean that libertarians are social nonconformists on principle? Not at all. Some few libertarians may aspire to be, but most would see that as undesirable because it would obstruct their most important objectives. Lots of libertarian men have no problem wearing a jacket and ...

America’s Cluster- Bomb Congress

by James Bovard August 1, 2014

Tens of thousands of Americans have been bushwhacked by a single arcane sentence in a 673-page law Congress enacted six years ago. The IRS is seizing both federal and state tax refunds for individuals whom the Social Security Administration accuses of having received excessive benefits years ago. But the government often has zero evidence of the overpayments, and the ...

The Poverty of Top- Down Anti-Poverty Efforts

by David S. D'Amato August 1, 2014

The Idealist: Jeffrey Sachs and the Quest to End Poverty by Nina Munk (Doubleday 2012), 272 pages. In the idealist, the system-building visionary, there is a certain natural attractiveness, a gravitational pull centered on the strength of his convictions. We desire to be a part of his crusade, or at least to root it on, because we admire the ...

How I Learned Not to Shovel

by James Bovard February 1, 2014

The Obama administration has touted government jobs and training programs as one of the solutions to America’s high unemployment rate. Such programs can teach young people invaluable lessons — especially about the unreliability of political promises to provide kids with valuable skills. I learned a lot about the nature of government work during the summer I spent on the ...

How I Came to Reject the Welfare State, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 2013

Part 1 | Part 2 According to a Census Bureau announcement during the 1950s, I was growing up in the poorest city in the United States. That was Laredo, Texas, a city that borders the Rio Grande. Even though I was only a kid, that announcement struck me hard. Here I was, actually living in the poorest ...

The Food-Stamp Juggernaut

by Laurence M. Vance July 30, 2013

The number of Americans receiving food stamps is at an all-time high — and still climbing. One in seven Americans is now on food stamps. Although the food-stamp program has been officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) since 2008, because recipients received $1, $5, and $10 paper coupons (stamps) redeemable for food for so many years, the ...

Cancerville, D.C.

by Joel Valenzuela June 3, 2013

Washington, D.C., is booming. And that’s a problem. America is still sick. Its economy, and indeed that of the world, struggle on in a sorry state of disrepair. The much-awaited recovery is finally here, and it’s nothing to get excited about. Frustrated millennials have even taken to cracking jokes about how easy it was for their parents’ generation ...

Who Killed Greece?

by Anthony J. Papalas May 1, 2013

The Greek tragedy began in 1981 when PASOK, the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party, won the national elections. Andreas Papandreou, who had been a member of the Greek Communist Party and had received his Ph.D. in economics at Harvard in 1942, founded and led PASOK. He had published significant scholarly works with a Keynesian slant and served as chairman of the ...

Ending Social Security

by Laurence M. Vance April 19, 2013

All is not well with the Social Security system. According to the annual report of the Board of Trustees of Social Security, “The 2012 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds,” (PDF) Social Security’s expenditures have exceeded its noninterest income since 2010. Although the Social Security ...

TGIF: Bastiat on the Socialization of Wealth

by Sheldon Richman March 22, 2013

That … veil which is spread before the eyes of the ordinary man, which even the attentive observer does not always succeed in casting aside, prevents us from seeing the most marvelous of all social phenomena: real wealth constantly passing from the domain of private property into the communal domain. Wealth marvelously passing from the private to the communal domain? ...