Socialism

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 ...

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 ...

Collectivist Revivalism and the New Attack on Liberty

by Richard M. Ebeling October 23, 2019

America and some other parts of the world are facing a “revivalist” movement, but rather than being a religious revival, it is an ideological revivalism calling for a turn away from freedom and the open society, and back to an earlier societal tribalism and tyranny. It cuts across the usual political spectrum because what one finds is a common faith ...

Progressivism Is An Imposter

by Richard M. Ebeling October 11, 2019

What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.” This became an often-repeated popular line after its use in the 1967 movie Cool Hand Luke. A 1950s Florida prison warden (played by actor Strother Martin) says those words after an insolent remark by one of the prisoners (played by Paul Newman) results in the warden lashing that prisoner with ...

Senator Warren’s Plan Shows the True Nature of Social Security

by Laurence M. Vance September 26, 2019

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a plan. Although her plan is about expanding Social Security, it is a strange coincidence that she released her plan on the very day she would be appearing onstage at a Democratic presidential debate alongside two other Democratic candidates near the top of the pack: the former vice president and senator Joe Biden and the ...

The Specter of Communism Is Haunting Illinois

by Laurence M. Vance September 1, 2019

A specter is haunting Illinois — the specter of communism. Although the governor of Illinois, Jay “J.B.” Pritzker, said earlier this summer, upon signing the state’s $40 billion budget for the 2020-2021 fiscal year, that the budget was balanced “for the first time in decades,” according to the state’s own actuarial calculations, the budget is actually billions in the red. ...