Independent Institute Senior Fellow Robert Higgs is interviewed here by Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox News’ program, “Freedom Watch,” regarding the utter folly of the gigantic federal spending programs first started under George W. Bush and now enormously expanded by Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress. Prolonging the recovery amidst enormous economic confusion and...
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When I was younger, we thought the line “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you,” the height of hilarity, invariably greeted with derisive hoots of laughter. Today it seems that any government official’s exhortation to “Trust me” is greeted as holy gospel, with nary more to be said. A case in...
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As Congress debates the merits of the “public option” for health insurance, we might look at Florida for some experience, because Florida has had a public option for years, not for health insurance but for property insurance. After Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992 some Floridians were having difficulty purchasing homeowners’ insurance. (The reason:...
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Those of us laboring for academic reform often feel like Sisyphus, rolling a rock up the hill only to have it come crashing down again. The gods of academe seem to have condemned higher education to inevitable decay. That thought came to me as I read about the demise of an institute (at Hamilton...
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Second only to Ron Paul, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson is the most pro-liberty politician of any prominence. It looks like he might be considering a presidential run. Johnson seems like a dream come true (at least for a politician). For example, he supports the second amendment, marijuana legalization, and fought tax increases...
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Expressing his frustration with an occupation in Afghanistan that is doomed to fail, citing similarities between the U.S. effort and the failed Soviet occupation of the same country, reminding us that the futility is reminiscent of American involvement in Vietnam, calling the entire project a “complex, opaque and Sisyphean mission” that is strategically bankrupt...
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Although democracy now comes closer than anything else to serving as a world religion, it has never lacked critics. For millennia those critics, such as Aristotle, had large followings among political thinkers and practicing politicians. Even as late as 1787, when a group of prominent men met in Philadelphia to compose the U.S. Constitution,...
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A new political thriller from PBS, “Endgame,” provides the little-known, true back story of apartheid’s end in South Africa, with credit given to a for-profit mining company. Foreseeing that deteriorating conditions in South Africa would likely result in a total loss of their assets, Consolidated Goldfields initiated secret discussions between representatives of the white...
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News is coming in on the most bloody bombing in Baghdad in two years. The temporary lull in violence there, at least in relative terms, has allowed Americans to forget about the precarious nature of the occupation. We have a president who as a politician opposed the Iraq war before it started, but by...
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The United States enacted its minimum wage law in 1938. It didn’t cover all workers, and still doesn’t, but establishes a policy that in some cases government should abridge people’s freedom of contract to mandate a wage different from the one people might agree upon. The “principle” appears to be that some wage levels...
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