Daily Articles

Obamacare’s Other Achilles Heel

by Wendy McElroy January 4, 2013

With the media obsessing about the fiscal cliff, many people may not have noticed that net American taxes for the next decade just rose by around $1 trillion. That’s the cost of the first phase of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare. Much of the increase will be borne by the average working person. The watchdog ...

The Calling: Why “Rent-Seeking”?

by Steven Horwitz January 3, 2013

Public Choice theory, especially in the hands of James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, has given libertarians a very effective set of arguments against government intervention. In the face of cries of “market failure,” when real-world imperfect markets quite understandably fall short of the unrealistic model of perfect competition that mainstream economists use to portray free markets, the Public ...

Torture and the Rule of Law

by Tim Kelly January 3, 2013

Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 6,000-page report providing a comprehensive analysis of the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the committee chair, released a statement saying that “the report uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program and raises questions about intelligence operations and oversight.” The report could shed some ...

Women, Discrimination, and a Free Society

by Laurence M. Vance January 2, 2013

For the first time in its history, South Korea has elevated a woman to the office of president. Newly elected Park Geun-hye is the daughter of the president and dictator Park Chung-hee, who ruled the country from 1961 until his assassination in 1979. During her presidential campaign, she pledged to increase government aid to single parents, expand maternity and paternity ...

Clinton’s Legacy, Part 2: The Attacks on 9/11

by Sheldon Richman January 1, 2013

Part 1 | Part 2 Last month I sought to correct the record by showing that the administration of Bill Clinton (1993–2001), which is almost universally viewed with nostalgia, played a major role in inflating the housing bubble, which led to the Great Recession, thanks to aggressive polices pushed by his second secretary of Housing and Urban ...

The Forgotten Pox of Government Spending

by James Bovard January 1, 2013

It is only a question of time until Washington is convulsed by the next federal budget crisis. Unfortunately, neither major political party is offering substantive proposals to curb soaring federal outlays. And Washington itself is inherently unable to recognize the true threat of government spending to Americans’ future and freedom. It was a common saying in the 1930s that “we ...

The Successes and Failures of Social Security

by Laurence M. Vance January 1, 2013

One of the oldest, largest, most popular, and most expensive government programs is Social Security. After appealing to the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution in a speech to Congress in June of 1934, Franklin Roosevelt appointed a Committee on Economic Security to report and make recommendations on the task of “furthering the security of the citizen and his family ...

The Heroism of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

by Wendy McElroy January 1, 2013

A destructive myth hangs over the history of World War II. It is that a flaw within the German character allowed the rise of Hitler and Nazism. How else can you explain the coming of the Holocaust from one of the world’s most cultured nations? Oddly, no one seems to consider Mussolini as indicating a flaw in Italians or ...

The Jacob Hornberger Show: December 30, 2012 (video)

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2013

Authentic Liberalism Vindicated, Part 2: The Economics of Liberty

by Anthony Gregory January 1, 2013

Part 1 | Part 2 Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School by Ralph Raico, (Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2012); 347 pages. The passionate interest in economics among libertarians is not immediately understood by all students of liberty. Even those generally in favor of economic freedom for ethical reasons may wonder why so many libertarians adhere ...

Support FFF for 2013: Video 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger December 31, 2012

The situation certainly doesn’t look good. The U.S. welfare-warfare state is more entrenched than ever. Federal spending continues to soar. The national debt continues to mount. The Federal Reserve is cranking up the inflationary printing presses. Taxes continue to rise. The drug war keeps ruining lives. The regulated economy keeps suppressing economic vitality. We ...

Charity, Not Welfare

by Scott McPherson December 31, 2012

As long as human beings have gathered together in society, provisions have been made for the aid of the poor. In Europe, it was the church that came to shoulder most of this burden, granting a percentage of its income to those in need. In their excellent work, Life in a Medieval Castle, Joseph and Frances Gies ...