Stop the Political Gouging! by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2000 Price gouging! That's the sound of panicking Democrats as they contemplate the prospect of going into the election with the price of gasoline rising. They are miserable about the possibility that the growing economy, on which they long have thought they would ride to victory, might turn around and bite them. The ...
Reform Social Security … or Repeal It? by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2000 WITH THE presidential campaign season here, the quadrennial debate over Social Security has begun. Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush is calling for Social Security reform. He says that people should have the right to have their Social Security funds invested in the stock market. Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore says ...
The War on Drugs Rots America by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2000 President Clinton may have found a legacy, and the Republicans in Congress are backing him. His legacy? Taking the United States into the civil war raging in Colombia by an injection of $1.3 billion in money and military equipment, including combat helicopters, not to mention hundreds of American pilots and "advisors." And why is ...
Self-Defense Prohibition by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2000 The sickening spectacle of hoodlum gangs molesting women in New York City's Central Park in broad daylight while the police stood by has elicited volumes of criticism. But two key facts have been left out of the commentary: First, the police have no legal duty to come to any particular person's ...
Imagining Freedom for the 21st Century: A Presidential Candidate’s Press Conference, Part 2 by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2000 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 Ladies and gentlemen of the press, America is entering the 21st century as still one of the greatest nations in the world. We have had a booming economy for most of the last two decades that has created tens of millions of ...
Government: Creator of Uncertainty by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2000 THE STOCK MARKET tumbles of recent months are a reminder that when it comes to economic phenomena, subjectivism reigns. One of the pillars of the Austrian school of economics is the principle that in explaining economic events, objective entities and quantities in themselves dont count. What counts is what human beings make of them. As F.A. Hayek wrote, It is ...
More Mideast Bills by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2000 Surveying the history of England in The Rights of Man , Thomas Paine noted that "a bystander, not blinded by prejudice nor warped by interest, would declare that taxes were not raised to carry on wars, but that wars were raised to carry on taxes." The United States government has followed faithfully in England's footsteps. But ...
Clinton’s Fair-Trade Fraud by James Bovard July 1, 2000 PRESIDENT CLINTON prides himself on calling for “free and fair trade” with foreigners every chance he gets. However, what is the Clinton administration’s idea of fair trade? Few things better illustrate the political corruption of the idea of fairness than the abuses of the U.S. anti-dumping laws. Clinton’s Commerce Department found pretexts to condemn foreigners for unfair trade in 98 ...
FDR — The Man, the Leader, the Legacy, Part 10 by Ralph Raico July 1, 2000 Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Table of Contents When it comes to the question of money, mankind ...
Book Review: Trust on Trial by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2000 Trust on Trial: How the Microsoft Case Is Reframing the Rules of Competition by Richard B. McKenzie (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2000); 281 pages; $26. IN HIS 1942 BOOK, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Joseph A. Schumpeter argued, “The fundamental impulse that set and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or ...
Bush’s Social Security Sham by Sheldon Richman June 2, 2000 GOP presidential hopeful George W. Bush wants to let working people invest some of the money now taken by the Social Security payroll tax. The principle is sound. Money taken by the tax is not invested, but consumed. It pays benefits to current retirees, with anything left over going to pay the government's creditors. ...
The Rule of Terror by Jacob G. Hornberger June 1, 2000 THE HORRIFYING SEIZURE of Elián Gonzalez is one more reflection of the depths of depravity to which the U.S. government has plunged in our lifetime. The episode also reflects the extent to which all too many Americans continue to deny the reality that beneath the velvet glove of the benign welfare state lies the iron fist of a brutal, ...