Independent Institute Research Fellow Emily Skarbek is interviewed here by Nick Gillespie of Reason TV regarding the Institute’s very timely and far-reaching Government Cost Calculator. The Calculator enables any American to clearly understand three aspects of federal government spending. First, the Calculator helps you determine how much a person will pay for various federal...
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“Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Round Two” is the superb and very timely sequel to the phenomenally successful and insightful, rap video pitting the views of macroeconomist John Maynard Keynes against those of Austrian School economist Friedrich A. Hayek, “Fear the Boom and Bust.” The original has attracted to date more than...
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At least in part. In the run-up to the Iraq war, many protesters brandished signs declaring, “No War for Oil!” The response from those pushing for the war was typically that this was a childish and silly admonition. And of course, the precise economic reasoning involved in much of this dissent was indeed faulty:...
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[Cross-posted in The Lighthouse, 3/1/11] Politics makes strange bedfellows — including alliances of idealists and opportunists who lobby for the same regulations, but for vastly different reasons. The classic example is that of bootleggers and Baptists, both of whom supported local laws to stop the sale of alcohol on Sundays, but scholars have found...
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With President Obama’s new proposal for a massive, new federal plan for $53 billion in pork subsidies for high-speed rail, Independent Institute Research Fellow Gabriel Roth recently participated in a forum on public transit sponsored by the Mobility Choice Coalition. At the event, Bill Lind, director of the Center for Public Transportation affiliated with...
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The Wall Street Journal reports that the State of Michigan will soon make practicing massage without a license a felony. In the age of Yelp, why the explosion of state licensure? After all, if a masseuse is no good, word will soon get around, and it’s difficult to comprehend, in any event, just how...
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Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central hilariously skewers the hypocrisy, authoritarianism, and foolishness of “progressive” San Francisco’s Nanny-State ban of Happy Meals at McDonald’s restaurants in the city. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c The Daily Show on Facebook HT: Carl Haberberger

In a recent editorial, “The EPA’s Utility Men: Anticarbon regulations and the corporate rent-seekers who love them,” the Wall Street Journal notes that eight leading utility CEOs are cheering on the EPA’s new draconian, climate regulations and other policies because they stand to make huge profits by redistributing wealth to themselves. As the Journal...
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Independent Institute Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa was interviewed at Pepperdine University. Download mp3 file. Also, please see the following books from him: Liberty for Latin America: How to Undo Five Hundred Years of State Oppression The Che Guevara Myth and the Future of Liberty Lessons from the Poor: Triumph of the Entrepreneurial Spirit

I was on the road a good deal last week, driving from my home in southeast Louisiana first through a long stretch of Mississippi to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, then to the outskirts of Birmingham and on to Auburn, Alabama, and finally from there back to my home by way of Montgomery and Mobile. Along the way, I was...
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