Daily Articles

Price Controls Are No Answer to Isabel

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 19, 2003

Five states have declared a state of emergency as a result of Hurricane Isabel. Citizens in the affected states should hope that government officials don't do what they often do during such emergencies — impose price controls, especially on important items, such as water, ice, batteries, candles, and building supplies. During ...

Bush’s Iraqi Smoke

by Sheldon Richman September 19, 2003

The Bush administration long ago set the record for misleading the American people. Compared to President George W. Bush and his minions, Bill Clinton was an amateur. And don’t think that’s a small achievement. It isn’t easy to choose words that will both deceive and allow the speaker to claim later that ...

Big-Spending Republicans Can Learn from Ireland’s Reforms

by Benjamin Powell September 17, 2003

Despite some tax cuts, the size of the U.S. government has increased rapidly under President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress. Washington leaders looking to improve the economy could learn a lesson or two from Ireland, which has consistently achieved high rates of growth over the last 15 years by ...

Federal Spending Threatens Our Security

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 17, 2003

As is widely known, the federal spigots in foreign affairs, as in domestic affairs, are now wide open: hundreds of billions of dollars will be spent in Iraq, not to mention the billions of dollars in foreign aid that will be sent to dozens of foreign governments, all under the ...

Preserving Barns the Free-Market Way

by Scott McPherson September 15, 2003

There is a conflict over barns in New England. A man named Ken Epworth, a New Yorker, has formed a business called the Barn People, which specializes in disassembling 18th-century and 19th-century barns and reassembling them as attachments to expensive homes elsewhere. Locals are reacting angrily, accusing Epworth ...

Trade Restrictions Show Hypocrisy

by Sheldon Richman September 12, 2003

A lesson in government hypocrisy — as if one were needed these days — is to be found in the agricultural policies of the rich nations of the world, including the United States. The U.S. government incessantly proclaims its desire to help the world’s poor. Empty words. Sure, the ...

Ballot-Access Laws: A High Cost of Running for Office

by Bart Frazier September 12, 2003

The field of economics has had an interesting history in that the principles developed during its evolution have been widely applied to many other fields, one of them being politics. Nowhere today does the economic principle of transaction costs reveal more about politics than in California.

Another Phony Justification for Invading Iraq

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 10, 2003

In a 15-minute speech explaining why the American people should support the occupation of Iraq, President Bush offered another phony justification for the U.S. government’s invasion of Iraq: to fight the “war on terrorism.” There’s at least one big problem with that justification: It is the U.S. government’s own interventionist ...

Oh, Now the U.S. Cares About Iraqis

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 8, 2003

Labeling resisters to the U.S. occupation of Iraq as “terrorists” obfuscates an important point — that there are people in Iraq and all over the Middle East who hate the United States ... and, equally important, have good and sound reasons for hating the United States. That’s the last ...

Protecting Whales

by Scott McPherson September 8, 2003

The government of Iceland has recently commissioned a whaling ship to hunt and kill 38 minke whales to study the contents of their stomachs. According to the Washington Times (August 18), the Icelandic government claims the research is necessary “to measure effect on fish stocks such as ...

There Is No Freedom in Iraq, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2003

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 Unfortunately, all too many Americans have swallowed — hook, line, and sinker — the Bush administration’s claim that the Iraqi people are now free. The U.S. invasion of Iraq has indeed ousted the brutal dictatorial regime that ruled the country, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that life under the regime ...

An Empire for America

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 2003

Shortly before his death in 1902, the great classical-liberal social philosopher Herbert Spencer penned an essay entitled “Imperialism and Slavery” that was included in a collection of his writings under the title Facts and Comments (1902). The theme of the essay was that, as Great Britain was proceeding to expand its empire around the world, it was not only enslaving ...