In a May 1 editorial, The Washington Post called on Cuban dictator Fidel
Castro to honor a petition signed by 10,000 Cuban citizens demanding that a
national referendum be called on freedom of expression, free elections, the
right to private enterprise, and amnesty for political prisoners. The Post
correctly praised those 10,000 people for putting “their names to an
initiative that essentially seeks to replace Mr. Castro“s stale
totalitarianism with the political and economic freedom that now prevails
everywhere else in the Western Hemisphere.”
But what is meant by the term “economic freedom”?
Does it mean the economic freedom that characterized the United States, say
in 1890, or does it mean the “economic freedom” that characterizes the
modern-day welfare state in America?
By economic freedom, our ancestors meant: no income taxation, Social
Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, public schooling, occupational
licensure, drug laws, immigration controls, trade restrictions, and economic
regulations. That’s why Americans in 1890 lived without any of those things.
On the other hand, to advocates of the socialistic welfare state, “economic
freedom” means the extent to which government has the unfettered power to
watch over and take care of the citizenry and to tax them to pay for such
care and control. Thus, the paternalistic government programs that our
ancestors rejected as violations of economic freedom are embraced by
welfare-state advocates as essential aspects of “economic freedom.”
This raises an interesting question: How many advocates of the welfare state
in America would favor the following aspects of Cuba’s socialist economic
system: income taxation, old-age assistance, public schooling, national
health care, welfare, coercive redistribution of wealth, economic equality,
drug laws, occupational licensure, immigration controls, trade restrictions,
and economic regulations? Indeed, how many welfare statists would endorse
the Cuban government’s gun-control laws?
In the same editorial, the Post argues that the U.S. embargo against Cuba
should not be lifted. But what’s an embargo if not the deprivation of
economic liberty of American citizens? Doesn’t economic liberty entail the
right to do what you want with your own money? If the federal government can
punish an American citizen for spending his money in Cuba, how is that
different in principle from the Cuban government’s restrictions on what
Cubans can do with their own money?
