Mises Daily

The Communist Manifesto pushed a heavily progressive income tax as one of ten key ways to undermine the market order. Unfortunately, the idea didn't die with Marx. 

Murray N. Rothbard slices his way through ten of the most common value-based calumnies against the market economy. An excerpt  from Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market.

According to Galiani, interest equalizes present and future money. It is a means to compensate for the palpitations of the heart that a creditor must endure until the money is returned.

The whole system of priorities, allocations, quotas, and licenses causes endless delays, keeps efficient concerns from expanding, and keeps inefficient concerns in business.

"It is surely folly to say that government must socialize all property in order to prevent anyone from stealing property. Yet the reasoning behind abolition of private coinage is the same."

In an unhampered market, profit and loss are entirely determined by the success or failure of the entrepreneur to adjust production to the demand of the consumers.

The market economy is the social system of the division of labor under private ownership of the means of production. "To assign to everybody his proper place in society is the task of the consumers. Their buying and abstention from buying is instrumental in determining each individual's social position."

The Act gave the secretary of the Treasury the power to require all individuals and corporations to hand over all their gold coin, gold bullion, or gold certificates if in his judgment "such action is necessary to protect the currency system of the United States."

It is generally accepted that a government can enslave the citizens—unless it is a democratic government. Mistake!

"The East lacked the primordial thing, the idea of freedom from the state. The East never raised the banner of freedom."