Socialism

Socialism, American Style, Part 3

by Jacob G. Hornberger September 25, 2020

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 I grew up in the poorest city in the United States. At least, that is what the Census Bureau told us back in the 1950s and 1960s about my hometown of Laredo, Texas, which is situated on the ...

Should Social Security Be Expanded?

by Laurence M. Vance September 21, 2020

Time is running out for Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Social Security. The Constitution, in Article I, Section 4, mandates that Congress assemble “at least once in every Year.” Each Congress is numbered and lasts two years, with two legislative sessions. The current Congress is the 116th to assemble since the ...

Socialism, American Style, Part 2

by Jacob G. Hornberger August 31, 2020

Part 1 | Part 2  | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 The crown jewel of American socialism is Social Security, a program that originated among socialists in Germany in the late 1800s and then was imported into the United States, where it became an established program in the 1930s as ...

Sell NPR to the Highest Bidder

by Laurence M. Vance June 11, 2020

Founded fifty years ago as National Public Radio, NPR — as it now always refers to itself — is a nonprofit media organization created by the federal government to replace the National Educational Radio Network (NERN). NPR, which is headquartered in Washington, D.C., functions as a membership organization of separately licensed and operated public radio ...

The Profitability of Amtrak Is Not the Issue

by Laurence M. Vance May 11, 2020

In addition to the federal government’s departments, such as Energy, Interior, and Education; and independent agencies, such as the CIA, FCC, and EPA; there exist government quasi-corporations, such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). What most Americans who take a train ride across the country probably don’t ...

Socialism, American Style, Part 1

by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2020

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 In September 1990, the first year of The Future of Freedom Foundation’s existence, FFF published an article I wrote entitled “Letting Go of Socialism.” The article’s opening paragraph stated, Socialism has held the world in its grip since the beginning ...

Right, Bernie! We Are All (Ersatz) Socialists Now

by David Stockman March 12, 2020

In 1971 Nixon famously said “we are all Keynesians now” as he ash-canned the Bretton Woods gold exchange standard, thereby unleashing fiat central banking on the world economy. At the time, the Keynesian part wasn’t viewed as such a big deal by enlightened opinion. It was supposedly just the Republican Right catching-up with the Great Depression and shedding its vestigial ...

Liberalism Should Reject Welfare Statism

by Richard M. Ebeling March 5, 2020

Dislike for the personality and disagreement with the policies of Donald Trump have helped to revive a seemingly dead idea: socialism. This has placed friends and defenders of a free society on the defensive in having to make the positive case for free market liberalism. The economic and psychological shocks from the financial crisis of 2008-2009, and the emotional distaste ...

The Technocrats Will Not Save Us

by Richard M. Ebeling February 25, 2020

Besides the certainty, as they say, of death and taxes, one other highly likely event will be an end to the general “good times” of relatively low price inflation and low unemployment in America. In other words, the United States will eventually experience worsening inflation at some point, as well as another general economic downturn. The question is, what ...

Australia and New Zealand Show the True Nature of Social Security

by Laurence M. Vance January 7, 2020

Writing at the Christian Post in “Will Social Security Go Broke?” Christian financial advisor Chuck Bentley recently answered a question about Social Security from a “Worried Millennial”: I’m a recent college graduate with my first “real” job. With that comes paying into the Social Security System. My concern is whether or not there will be funds ...

Socialism in America

by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2020

Lost in the ongoing debate in America as to whether the United States should embrace socialism is a discomforting fact: America embraced socialism a long time ago. The problem is that many Americans have simply not wanted to accept that fact and instead have preferred living a life of denial. A complete socialist system would be one in which the ...

Socialism and the Green New Deal are Economically Impossible

by Richard M. Ebeling December 6, 2019

The Spanish philosopher, George Santayana (1863-1952) is usually credited with the phrase, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Nowhere is this truer than with the renewed idea and demand for the establishment of a socialist economic system. A noticeable number of intellectuals inside and outside the ivy tower of academia, as well as a vocal ...