Daily Articles

The Deep State Defeat of Donald Trump

by James Bovard May 1, 2021

“The Trump–Deep State clash is a showdown between a presidency that is far too powerful versus federal agencies that have become fiefdoms with immunity for almost any and all abuses,” I wrote in an FFF article a year ago. Since then, Donald Trump lost the 2020 election by fewer than 50,000 votes in a handful of swing states that ...

What Is Missing in the Arguments against a Minimum-Wage Hike?

by Laurence M. Vance May 1, 2021

For several years now, Democrats, liberals, progressives, Democratic socialists, and socialists not afraid to proudly wear the name have been agitating for an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. Organized labor groups, many large corporations, and organizations such as Fight for $15 have joined them. A standard 40-hour workweek at $15 an hour results in ...

An Old Geezer on Learning about Liberty and Its Loss

by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 2021

I am now in my 70s. No longer a spring chicken but not a dead duck yet either, with, I hope, a few good years left. When I was in my mid 20s, I had the opportunity and good fortune to meet and interact for most of two summers with the noted Austrian economist and Nobel Prize winner Friedrich ...

My Case against Minimum-Wage Laws

by George Leef May 1, 2021

Minimum-wage laws are again in the news, as Joe Biden and his political allies in Congress seek to push the national minimum from its current level of $7.25 per hour up to $15 per hour. Some politicians, Sen. Bernie Sanders for one, declare that people can barely survive even on $15 per hour. If the law takes the minimum ...

Taking the Good with the Bad

by Laurence M. Vance April 28, 2021

Marijuana freedom is a good thing. The taxation of marijuana is a bad thing. Unfortunately, owing to the greed of spendthrift politicians, it looks as though we will have to take the good with the bad or not at all. Now, this does not mean that smoking marijuana is “good.” It just means that the freedom to smoke marijuana — ...

Armed Self-Defense Is Essential in a Free Society

by Richard M. Ebeling April 20, 2021

The recent string of multiple-victim incidents of gun violence and police shootings of black Americans has once again resulted in renewed calls for restrictions on gun ownership. President Biden has said that executive instructions to various branches of the Federal government will attempt to reduce the frequency and possibility of such violence. Some of his proposals, however, are merely using ...

Rule by Fiat: When the Government Does Whatever It Wants

by John W. Whitehead April 19, 2021

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” — Ayn Rand Rule by brute force. That’s about as good a description ...

Carl Menger’s Theory of Institutions and Market Processes

by Richard M. Ebeling April 14, 2021

This year marks the 150th anniversary of a radical change in the way economists came to understand the logic of human decision-making and the formation of prices in society. There occurred what is often referred to as the “marginalist revolution” in place of the classical economists’ notion of a “labor theory of value,” which was generally accepted from the ...

Conservatives, Free Trade, and the WTO

by Laurence M. Vance April 12, 2021

Writing for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Anthony B. Kim says that “it’s time to get serious about reforming World Trade Organization.” Kim “researches international economic issues at The Heritage Foundation, with a strong focus on economic freedom.” He maintains that “with a new director at the ...

Letter to Senate Homeland Committee

by Lawrence P. Schnapf April 9, 2021

Read Larry Schnapf's letter here.

Dangerous Monetary Manipulations and Fiscal Follies

by Richard M. Ebeling April 7, 2021

Back in the 1960s, Everett Dirksen (1896-1969) served as the Republican Party minority leader in the U.S. Senate. One of his famous lines about federal government spending was, “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Those days are long past. Now it’s: A trillion here, and a trillion there, and then you ...

The UBI, CTC, EITC, and the GOP

by Laurence M. Vance April 5, 2021

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Robert Doar and Matt Weidinger, two scholars at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank, are lamenting the passage of the Democrats’ American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. They see it as the “Democrats’ stealth plan to enact universal basic income” because the “Covid stimulus would give checks ...