The two dominant parties are off in la-la land, unaware of the colossal growth of the welfare state, the regulatory state, and the warfare state. They generally mistake the symptoms for the causes and sometimes confuse the problems with the solutions.
Category: Economics
Cuban Food Shortages: Another Red Flag
Aside from raising our moral hackles, price controls have demonstrable effects on wellbeing: price controls increase poverty and hunger. Contrary to the utopian dreams of policymakers, price controls distort market activity in perverse ways. They are meant to lower prices on goods and make it easier for people to acquire them; and they might help some people and score political points — both are temporary — but they cause shortages instead.
French Exports to Avoid: Wealth Taxes
There is a reason that most countries don’t tax total assets — and it’s not generosity. Rather, it is because such taxes are unproductive. As might be expected, wealth taxes lead to capital flight and brain drain; they cause a drop in savings and investment, as well as entrepreneurship. They have high administrative costs (involved in finding and valuing assets). In the end, wealth taxes tend to yield low revenue, while dragging down economic growth. But they do make for good politics, especially in election years; envy commands votes.
The New York Times Thinks ‘Brutal Capitalism,’ Not Socialism, Ruined Venezuela
Fact check: Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is the leader of the Socialist Party.
Under their idealized system, socialists claim, the government’s centralized redistribution of resources will be fair, equal, and democratic. Yet it certainly says something about such a system that it collapses into outright tyranny every time it is attempted. Socialist governance seems to require concentrating an extraordinary amount of power in elite government decision makers; this tends to produce a new ruling class, the widespread deprivation of political rights for everyone else, and crippling poverty.
Milton Friedman: ‘Crack Would Never Have Existed If You Had Not Had Drug Prohibition’
The prohibition of drugs produces on the average 10,000 additional homicides a year. It’s a moral problem that the government is going around killing 10,000 people. It’s a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people who may be doing something you and I don’t approve of but who are doing something that hurts nobody else.
NOTHING is “Adequately Funded”
You’ve heard that a task tends to expand to fill the allotted time. The same is true of budgets and spending: a project expands to fill the resources allotted to it, and it is easy from that point to say, “if only we had more resources.”
A Lesson on Tariffs and Free Lunches From the American Revolution
The Townshend Acts of 1767 imposed these indirect taxes on imports to the American colonies, including glass, paint, lead, paper, and tea.
The colonists weren’t fooled. They knew these tariffs were another attempt by Parliament to raise revenue without their consent and exert control over the colonies. They knew who paid these duties.
Arguments Against Markets
Those of us who want to keep government small and strictly limited — and, hence, who want individuals to have very wide latitude to make whatever peaceful choices they wish in markets — are far outnumbered by individuals who distrust markets to deliver enough of the goods to enough of the people. Why this distrust? What must sincere opponents of free markets have in mind to motivate their enthusiasm for replacing market processes with government commands?
Trump Advisor Admits Trade War Against China Failed
Trump’s tariffs—in addition to those since imposed by President Joe Biden—continue to raise prices for Americans. In fact, promising great economic results and not achieving them is key to Trump’s record: After announcing the $200 billion deal in the first place, he tweeted that “it will bring both the USA & China closer together in so many other ways.” And of course, Trump’s anti-trade rhetoric was based on the trade deficit between the U.S. and China, which increased as a result of his policies.
https://reason.com/2024/06/19/trump-advisor-admits-trade-war-against-china-failed/
New York and Vermont Seek to Impose a Retroactive Climate Tax
Residents in both New York and Vermont already pay over 30 percent more than the US average in residential electricity prices, and this legislation will not lower these costs to consumers. Climate superfunds are not a serious attempt to solve environmental challenges but rather a way to raise government revenue while unfairly punishing an entire industry.
https://www.cato.org/blog/new-york-vermont-seek-impose-retroactive-climate-tax