Prostitute Parking Meters! What Will the Germans Tax Next?

In a perverse way (pun intended), I admire German politicians for their creativity. They will figure out ways to tax just about anything. Their latest scheme is a plan that requires streetwalkers to put money in parking meters in exchange for a slip of paper that entitles them to…um…ply their trade for a specified period [...]

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Let’s Send Obama to the Vatican for an Economics Lesson

I’m normally disappointed when religious figures comment on economics, particularly since they often turn the individual call to charity into a blank check for government-coerced redistribution. This runs contrary to individual choice, free will, and morality. So I’m delighted that Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, writing for  L’Osservatore Romano, the quasi-official newspaper of the Vatican,  persuasively explains [...]

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Rich People Should Help the Poor by…Making Smart Investments and Earning Big Profits

There’s a very provocative article on the New York Times website that criticizes Steve Jobs for his supposed lack of charitable giving. Surprisingly, there is one thing that Mr. Jobs is not, at least not yet: a prominent philanthropist. Despite accumulating an estimated $8.3 billion fortune through his holdings in Apple and a 7.4 percent stake [...]

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Good News: Americans Are Increasingly Hostile to the Federal Government

I wrote last year that, “I don’t think public policy should be based on polling data, but I always am happy when the American people are on the right side of an issue since it increases the possibility of good outcomes in Washington.” One other thing to consider is that pollsters can manipulate results by [...]

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One Man Can Make a Difference: Jay Beeber’s Successful Battle Against Revenue Cameras in Los Angeles

In a decision that is overwhelmingly the result of the hard work and dedication of one person, Los Angeles is ending its revenue-generating red-light camera scheme. Here’s Jay Beeber’s interview with Reason TV. If you’re interested, this post has more information about how red-light cameras make intersections more dangerous. It’s probably an exaggeration to say [...]

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Obama Supports VAT Sympathizer for Top Job at Council of Economic Advisers

The White House has announced that it is nominating Alan Krueger, a professor at Princeton, to be the new Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers. In a Freudian copy-editing slip, the Fox News story (at least as of 8:44 a.m.) says “Krueger’s job will be to provide policy prescriptions on ways to spur unemployment.” [...]

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R-Rated Schwarenegger Humor

I’m making the image a thumbnail, so click at your own risk. You have only yourself to blame if you’re offended by juvenile humor.

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Another Fed-Bashing Video

I generally try to avoid commenting on monetary policy. Not because I don’t have opinions, but for the simple reason that I don’t follow the issue closely enough to feel fully confident about what I say. This doesn’t mean I’m happy with Fed Chairman Bernanke. But I’m most likely to be upset that he is [...]

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Anti-Gun Fanaticism: London Mayor Issues Edict Forbidding Children from Attending Olympic Shooting Contests

I’ve written before about the wussifcation of America, but we definitely haven’t sunk to the level of the United Kingdom. Here are some excerpts from a National Review column about the Mayor of London (supposedly a conservative), who is barring children from watching Olympic shooting events. …not all policies are created equal, and almost none [...]

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Is It Wrong to Warn other Motorists about Speed Traps?

Whenever I find a story that involves a thorny issue of right vs wrong, I like to see what readers think. Indeed, this has become a semi-regular feature of this blog. I’ve cited some tough cases in previous posts, dealing with difficult topics such as vigilante justice, brutal tax collection tactics, child molestation, Sharia law, [...]

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An Amazing Indictment of Obamanomics – Banks that Don’t Want Deposits

I’ve commented on the failure of Obamanomics, with special focus on how both banks and corporations are sitting on money because the investment climate is so grim. Not exactly flattering to the White House. Using Minneapolis Federal Reserve data, I’ve compared the current recovery with the expansion of the early 1980s. Once again, not good [...]

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Is the USA or UK Home to the World’s Most Disgusting Welfare Bum?

Last week, I wrote about an utterly reprehensible welfare mom in the United Kingdom who  had the gall to blame the government when one of her 11 kids was arrested for rioting. Surely, I thought, she was the perfect symbol of the moral depravity caused by welfare state dependency. But I may have been wrong. [...]

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Political Earthquake Humor

I’ve seen a couple of jokes connecting the earthquake to what’s happening in Washington, but none of them have been overly funny (i.e., the “earthquake was caused by all the Founding  Fathers rolling over in their graves”). But maybe it’s not easy to find humor in things such as earthquakes and hurricanes. Indeed, my only [...]

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Which Group Is More Despicable, French Politicians or French Rich People?

I enjoy mocking the French every so often, including posts about the nation’s absurd fiscal policy, its protesting government workers, its oddball laws against meanness, its penchant for high taxes, and its shallow attempts to redefine success. Sometimes, I even criticize the French when they move policy in the right direction. But it’s worth pointing [...]

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New CBO Numbers Confirm – Once Again – that Modest Spending Restraint Can Balance the Budget

The Congressional Budget Office has just released the update to its Economic and Budget Outlook. There are several things from this new report that probably deserve commentary, including a new estimate that unemployment will “remain above 8 percent until 2014.” This certainly doesn’t reflect well on the Obama White House, which claimed that flushing $800 [...]

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Is Obama Really Going to Propose another Keynesian Stimulus?

Just last week, I made fun of Paul Krugman after he publicly said that a fake threat from invading aliens would be good for the economy since the earth would waste a bunch of money on pointless defense outlays. Yesterday, there were rumors that Krugman stated that it would have been stimulative if the earthquake [...]

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Are We Obligated to Obey Unjust Laws?

After World War II, some Germans tried to defend venal behavior by claiming that they were “just following orders” from their government. Governments in America have never done anything nearly as awful as the Nazis, but there certainly are some very unpleasant blemishes in our past – and some very bad laws today. This raises [...]

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It’s Wrong to Steal…Even When the Government Does It Using Asset Forfeiture

As a grumpy libertarian, I routinely get agitated about taxes, spending, and regulation. As far as I’m concerned, much of government is a racket that uses coercion to reward interest groups with unearned wealth. But there are degrees of evil. So if you asked me to pick the most reprehensible thing that government does,  “asset [...]

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Republicans in Glass Houses Should Be Careful When Throwing Stones at Obama

Congressman Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, has a rather persuasive column in the Washington Post about the negative impact of President Obama’s big-government agenda. … the Obama administration’s anti-business, hyper-regulatory, pro-tax agenda has fueled economic uncertainty and sent the message from the administration that “we want to make it harder to create jobs.” There [...]

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What’s Wrong with the Obama Economy? This Cartoon Says 1,000 Words

I could write a lengthy post about why Obamanomics has been a failure, but this cartoon says it perfectly. It has the same basic message as this classic cartoon – people are less likely to produce when government is too much of a burden. If you want some empirical evidence about the impact of Obama’s [...]

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Some Joe Biden Humor

Even though he’s widely seen as a clown and a buffoon, I’ve only had one Joe Biden joke on this blog (a two-parter you can find here and here). Though I hasten to add that Biden has been mentioned in a few of the joke collections from the late-night comics (here, here, here, and here) [...]

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What’s Better for Poor People, Economic Growth or Redistribution?

I took part in a thirty-minute online Skype debate for PBS on income inequality, and they boiled it down to the 4:44 youtube video embedded below. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that I said economic growth was the key. I don’t want to re-slice the pie. I want to make it bigger. I [...]

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Brutal and Funny Anti-Obama Video

Do not watch this if you disapprove of the F-word. But you’ll probably laugh if you click the video. Even though I’m posting this video solely for the humor value, I feel compelled to nag everybody with a reminder that the balance-the-budget message is misguided. We should be striving to shrink the the burden of [...]

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If Raising the Debt Ceiling and Issuing More Debt Was the Way To Preserve America’s Credit Rating, that Means…

…Well, I’m not sure what it means. But it sure doesn’t make sense when you look at the big picture. A credit card company wouldn’t increase a deadbeat’s credit limit, so why is it a sign of fiscal prudence to give Uncle Sam more borrowing authority? That being said, I never thought it was realistic [...]

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When an American Company Redomiciles to the Cayman Islands, What Lesson Should We Learn?

Another American company has decided to expatriate for tax reasons. This process has been going on for decades, with companies giving up their U.S. charters (a form of business citizenship) and redomiciling in low-tax jurisdictions such as Bermuda, Ireland, Switzerland, Panama, Hong Kong, and the Cayman Islands. The companies that choose to expatriate usually fit [...]

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Another Compelling Reason to Shut Down the Department of Housing and Urban Development

I’ve already explained why the Department of Housing and Urban Development should be eliminated, but a superb column in the Wall Street Journal by my old friend Jim Bovard has my blood boiling. After reading Jim’s piece, I no longer want to merely abolish HUD. I want to bulldoze the building, cover the ground with [...]

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Report from World Economic Forum Gives U.S. Poor Grades for Wasteful Spending and Burdensome Regulation

The latest issue of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report contains some rather damning information about government incompetence in the United States. America ranks only 68th in the “Wastefulness of Government Spending” category (page 373) and 49th in the “Burden of Government Regulation” category (page 374). Singapore, by contrast, ranks first in both of [...]

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The Keynesian Crackup Continues: From Space Aliens to Food-Stamp Stimulus

Paul Krugman recently argued that a fake threat from space aliens would be good for the economy because the people of earth would waste a bunch of money building unnecessary defenses. That was a bit loopy, as I noted a few days ago, but other Keynesians also have been making really weird assertions. Obama’s Secretary [...]

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A Despicable Human Being Created by the British Welfare State?

Every so often, I can’t resist condemning someone for grossly immoral behavior. I beat up on Robert Murphy for stealing the value of someone else’s property. I attacked Olga Stefou for symbolizing the looter-class mentality of Greece. And I mocked Michael Wolfensohn for ratting out a couple of kids who were having an unlicensed (gasp!) [...]

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Creating Galt’s Gulch from Scratch?

Advocates of limited government love to fantasize. But because we’re strange people, we don’t have ordinary fantasies about supermodels or playing pro baseball. We daydream about a libertarian nirvana, where the rights of individuals are protected, guided by a moral order based on freedom and responsibility, and the leviathan state is forever constrained. Ayn Rand [...]

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