Is Clarence Thomas the Best Supreme Court Justice?

I’m not a lawyer, so I certainly can’t pretend to have expert views, but everytime I read something like this, my regard for Justice Thomas rises even higher. In the McDonald case, the justices were asked by the plaintiffs to strike down Chicago’s gun-control ordinance as a violation of the Second Amendment to the Constitution. [...]

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Obama’s Fiscal Fantasyland

That’s the title of Richard Rahn’s new column in the Washington Times, which discusses the delusional Keynesian policy being advocated – in America and around the world – by the current administration. As Richard explains, the evidence is overwhelming that government spending does not promote prosperity. In the face of the unprecedented congressional spending binge, [...]

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Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats, Part XXXIV

This new video from Reason.tv is a sobering look at how excessive pensions for state and local government bureaucrats are creating a fiscal nightmare for governments across the nation.

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Tom Sowell Wisdom on Firearms and the Constitution

In addition to noting that gun control tends to increase crime by reducing the cost of being a criminal (i.e., thugs are less likely to meet armed resistance), Tom Sowell also explains that people who don’t like the Constitution should amend the document rather than appointing ideologically-motivated Justices who ignore what it says. …there is no [...]

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Great Moments in International Bureaucracy

Europe’s economy is stagnant, the euro currency is in danger of collapse, and many nations are on the verge of bankruptcy. But one thing you can count on in this time of crisis is for prompt, thoughtful, and intelligent action by the super-bureaucrats of the European Commission. Right? Well, maybe not. You can be confident, however, [...]

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We All Know Government Is too Big, but the Rahn Curve Provides the Evidence

Please share this video with everyone you know. It explains the “Rahn Curve,” which is a spending version of the Laffer Curve. Named after Cato Institute’s Richard Rahn, the Curve shows that modest amounts of government spending – for core “public goods” such as rule of law and protection of property rights – is associated [...]

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Should Convicts Be Allowed to Smoke?

I’m somewhat conflicted by this BBC story from New Zealand. I want prison to be a miserable experience so that there is a strong deterrent effect. Yet anything that keeps prisoners calm is presumably good for prison management. The guy who sent me this story included a comment that a smoking ban will increase the lifespan [...]

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A (Narrow) Victory for the 2nd Amendment

John Lott is one of America’s leading scholars of gun rights and the 2nd Amendment. His Foxnews.com column explains today’s ruling in favor of the Constitution and explains how the 2008 Heller decision led to less murder in Washington, DC. With another closely decided 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled today that state [...]

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Robert Samuelson’s Unintentional Case for Austrian Economics

In his Washington Post column discussing a crisis of confidence among economists, Robert Samuelson correctly notes that Keynesians don’t seem to have the right answers. But he concludes that other schools of thought are similarly befuddled by current events. What he writes is not terribly objectionable, but it’s almost as if he thinks the fiscal debate in the [...]

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Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats, Part XXXIII

If misery loves company, then American and English taxpayers can enjoy a bonding experience after reading this story about excessive pay for bureaucrats in Brussels. According to the Daily Telegraph, at least 1,000 (and probably more than 2,000) of these euro-crats earn more than the U.K. Prime Minster. More than one thousand EU officials earn [...]

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Questions for Elena Kagan

I don’t know what will happen when the Senate Judiciary Committee grills Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, but I hope at least one member reads George Will’s column and uses some of his suggested questions. They are all worth reading, but here are my three favorites:  The government having decided that Chrysler’s survival is an urgent [...]

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Some Federal Reserve Humor

I’ve always tried to stay away from monetary policy, and I’ve never thought the topic lent itself to humor, but this song parody I saw on Greg Mankiw’s blog is at least somewhat amusing.

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Canadian Boondoggles and Russia Is More Capitalist than the U.S. (Again)

The G-20 gab-fest is in Canada this weekend, but Canadian taxpayers are definitely not winners. In a display of waste that might even embarrass a French politician, the Canadian government somehow is going to squander $1 billion hosting the event. I can’t even conceive of why such an event should even cost $10 million. Maybe [...]

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At Least We Made if Farther than France

I’m not a soccer fan, but I’m nonetheless disappointed that the American team lost. Having said that, at least we got farther than a certain team from a socialist nation (not that we can point too many fingers in that regard after what Bush and Obama have done). So in honor of the World Cup, [...]

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The Keynesian Crack-Up

This is another post with a long excerpt, but this editorial from the Wall Street Journal is excellent. I encourage you to click the link and read the whole thing. …the larger story is the end of the neo-Keynesian economic moment, and perhaps the start of a healthier policy turn. For going on three years, [...]

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Bureaucracy Run Amok

John Derbyshire of National Review has an interesting article on bureaucratic harassment of private business. He begins with a personal story of something that happened when he first came to the United States and was working at a food-preparation company: The first federal regulator I ever knew was a fellow named Ernie. …Ernie was a power [...]

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The G-20 Fiscal Fight: A Pox on Both Their Houses

Barack Obama and Angela Merkel are the two main characters in what is being portrayed as a fight between American “stimulus” and European “austerity” at the G-20 summit meeting in Canada. My immediate instinct is to cheer for the Europeans. After all, “austerity” presumably means cutting back on wasteful government spending. Obama’s definition of “stimulus,” by [...]

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Talking About IRS Incompetence on MSNBC

I did a post yesterday about the IRS screwing up and sending housing tax credits to prison inmates. Apparently, the 100,000 bureaucrats at the IRS were unable to put 2 and 2 together and realize that jailbirds – by definition – are not buying new homes. I also appeared on MSNBC to talk about the [...]

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Big-Business Lobby Group Supports So-Called Stimulus and Obamacare and then Has Gall to Complain about Big Government

Regular readers of this blog know that big corporations often are enemies of free markets and individual liberty. So it is hardly suprising to know that the Business Roundtable, a lobby representing CEOs of major companies, supported the wasteful and ineffective stimulus pprogram in 2009 and the bloated new healthcare entitlement in 2010. Big companies, [...]

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European Central Bank President Wants to Exacerbate Continent’s Fiscal Crisis

It’s been amusing, in an I-told-you-so fashion, to follow the fiscal crises in Greece, Spain, and other European welfare states.And I feel like a voyeuristic ghoul as I observe the incredibly misguided bailout policies being adopted by the political elites (who are trying to bail out the business elites who made silly loans to corrupt nations [...]

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Great Moments in Government Stupidity

There really isn’t much I can add to this story in USA Today about the IRS giving money to prisoners. Yes, it is a story about typical government incompetence. But it also shows the inevitable problems that occur when government engages in industrial policy and social engineering via the tax code. Let’s call this argument [...]

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Nazis, Communists, and Moral Bankruptcy

Jeff Jacoby righteously – and rightfully – condemns the moral perversion that allows people to overlook the barbaric cruelty and oppression of communism. If Jose Saramago, the Portuguese writer who died on Friday at 87, had been an unrepentant Nazi for the last four decades, he would never have won international acclaim or received the [...]

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Let’s Celebrate Some Inspiring News on Property Rights

This new video from the Institute for Justice celebrates the backlash against the Supreme Court’s reprehensible Kelo decision that allowed politicians to seize private property for the benefit of commercial developers and other campaign contributors. The best part of the video comes shortly before the three-minute mark, when the narrator notes that the corrupt politicians [...]

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The Tea Party Strikes Again as Pro-Bailout Congressman Loses Primary

There were closely-watched primaries yesterday in South Carolina and Utah. Most of the attention was on the Palmetto State, where an Indian-American woman won the GOP nomination for governor and an African-American won the nomination for the first district congressional seat. Both are positive developments since the respective candidates appear to be solid, limited-government conservatives. [...]

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The U.K. Version of Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

As the chart below indicates, the United Kingdom has a large budget deficit solely because government spending has increased to record levels (OECD data). Unfortunately, the new Tory-Liberal coalition government has decided that taxpayers should be punished for all the over-spending that occurred when the Labor government was in charge. The Telegraph reports that the [...]

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Tea Parties, Defense Spending, Overpaid Bureaucrats, Green Energy, and International Taxation

These are the issues I discuss in this wide-ranging Fox Business News interview.

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Top House Democrat Calls for Middle-Class Tax Hikes (and the real reason why)

I’ve frequently argued that the main purpose of “taxing the rich” is not to collect more revenue. Smart leftists, after all, understand that there are very strong Laffer Curve effects at the top of the income scale since investors and entrepreneurs have considerable ability to control the timing, level, and composition of their income. So [...]

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Congressman Barton, BP, Obama, and the Oil Spill

I was interviewed by CNN about the issues relating to Congressman Barton’s apology to BP. The network only used one of my quotes from the interview, and I was happy to see that I was not taken out of context (always a danger when you are taped in advance). To augment my limited quote from [...]

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A Bigger Government Means a Less Prosperous Economy

A new study from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University examines some of the academic research about the relationship between government spending and economic performance. Reinforcing many of the points I made in my theory and evidence videos, the GMU study finds that big government undermines growth: Although the studies are not all consistent, [...]

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Taxpayers vs. Bureaucrats, Part XXXII

American taxpayers are not the only ones getting ripped off by lavish pay and perks for bureaucrats. The Daily Mail reports on a new study about public sector pay in the United Kingdom: Public sector employees work nine years less than their private sector counterparts but are paid 30 per cent more, a bombshell report [...]

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