Mises Search

The Bush administration credits its tax bill for spurring economic recovery, though if you include the debt these big spenders have racked up, the net cost of government to the American taxpayer has vastly increased during the Bush presidency. And like all previous cases of GOP tax reductions, the same administration is sneakily doing what it

At last the topic of 9-11 has shifted onto productive ground. Thanks to the efforts of former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke, some thought is being put into the government failures behind the attacks. “Your government failed you,” he says. Precisely, and in many more ways than he or anyone else at these hearings is willing to say. Here

In this dreadful election season, many politicians have promised to “lead us into the future.” I can hardly think of a worse fate for any society than to be led into the future by the political class of gangsters, marauders, looters, and liars. Even the most honest and well-intended among them are powerless to improve the world in any way except

How can one combine professional life with the advancement of liberty? Of course it is presumptuous to offer a definitive answer since all jobs and careers in the market economy are subject to the forces of the division of labor. Because a person focuses on one task doesn’t mean that he or she isn’t great at many tasks; it means only that the

[Originally published April 29, 2004.] What is and what is not free trade is a source of unending confusion, as the new World Trade Organization ruling on US cotton demonstrates. It’s a good thing to have the US cotton subsidy racket receive a thorough thrashing, even if at the hands of an unnecessary and objectionable body such as the WTO. If it

A new poll shows 18–29 year olds turning against Bush, with 58 percent believing that the country is on the wrong track. This, however, doesn’t translate into support for Kerry. In fact the margin of difference between support for either major candidate is negligible. What does seem clear is that the wave of student enthusiasm for the GOP that

William F. Buckley and Irving Kristol recently explained why they are not drawn to consistent free-market logic, and why they have never been shy to advocate various forms of statism: they find market thinking rather dull. The psychology of the anti-market left can be a puzzle, but even more confounding is the mentality of the anti-market right.

Freedom can stand or fall on issues large (wars, depressions, natural disasters) or small (a hundred thousand regulations that manage our daily life). Regulations on food labeling count among the small issues. It is a tricky issue for market advocates because bad labeling might actually count as breach of contract and thereby require legal

Are you already fed up with hearing about the “ Ownership Society “ that Mr. Bush wants to create? Without television and the web, it took years for the phrase “New Deal” to become tiresome. But at some point, even FDR stopped using it. The “Great Society” had an even shorter shelf life and became a phrase of derision, uttered with a snarl rather

Let’s think about the word security, which has been in the news lately because the Bush administration seeks a major shift in the way funds are spent in Iraq . It wants $3 billion moved from spending on reconstruction to spending on “security.” There’s a political science lesson in that usage. The reason for the shift, of course, is the obvious