Daily Articles

Monetary Central Planning and the State, Part 20: Keynesian Economics and the Hubris of the Social Engineer

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1998

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 ...

Forget the Trade Deficit!

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 1998

Memo to newspaper editors: Stop publishing stories about the trade deficit. You are needlessly worrying people about something that means absolutely nothing. Forget the trade deficit. Except in the most trivial sense, there's no such thing. Adam Smith, that Scotsman who knew a fair bit about political ...

Tariffs as Enemies of Freedom

by James Bovard August 1, 1998

Some prominent protectionists, such as Pat Buchanan, are portraying high tariffs as an engine of national liberation — as a way to save Americans from foreign threats. However, tariffs always have been and always will be an enemy to individual freedom. The U.S. tariff code is the accumulated junk heap ...

Our Corrupting Welfare State

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 1998

Champions of the free society have long warned that the welfare state-in which the government does for people what they ought to do for themselves-has a corrosive effect on the character of human beings. There is no better evidence of this than what people have come to expect from what we mistakenly call "health ...

FDR – The Man, the Leader, the Legacy, Part 4

by Ralph Raico August 1, 1998

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 the United States entered the First World War, ...

Clinton’s Job Performance Puzzle

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 1998

The pundits are bewildered over the public's apparently contradictory response to President Clinton during his recent troubles. Most people have a low opinion of his character. Yet at least 60 percent of those polled think he's doing a terrific job and should not resign. How can this be? Assuming the polling ...

Domestic Passports for Hispanic-Americans

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 1, 1998

All of us have become accustomed to traveling with our passports when we leave the United States. But how many people realize that Hispanic-Americans must carry their passports when they travel domestically? I recently visited my hometown of Laredo, Texas, which is located on the southern border of the United ...

Restriction and Free Trade

by Fredric Bastiat August 1, 1998

Two opposite doctrines oppose each other: The one, which is dominant in legislation and opinions, sees the way of progress in the surplus of sales over purchases, of exports over imports — in a word, what is called balance of trade. The other, which we try to propagate, is the exact ...

Book Review: Collected Works of Edwin Cannan

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1998

Collected Works of Edwin Cannan in 8 volumes, edited by Alan Ebenstein (London/New York: Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1998); $900. In 1951, Austrian economist Friedrich A. Hayek wrote an essay entitled "The Transmission of the Ideals of Economic Freedom." He pointed out, "At the end of the First World War the spiritual tradition of liberalism was all but dead." But, Hayek ...

Treating Us Like Children

by Sheldon Richman July 2, 1998

It's getting harder and harder to imagine a Republican keeping a straight face while proclaiming the GOP to be the party of limited government and personal liberty. The latest reason? The Republican-controlled Senate recently voted 90-10 to outlaw gambling over the Internet. The prohibition, tagged onto an appropriations bill, would impose a penalty of three ...

A Libertarian Visits Costa Rica

by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 1998

Last spring, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation of Fairfax, Virginia, invited me to participate in two conferences in Costa Rica. One conference was to celebrate the inauguration of a new Costa Rican libertarian think tank named INLAP. The other was a conference of 1,000 international business people who were gathering to make free-market recommendations to the international negotiators of ...

Monetary Central Planning and the State, Part 19: Savings, Investment, and Interest and Keynesian Economics

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 1998

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 ...