Daily Articles

Tax Cuts Need No Justification

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2001

Tax cuts do not have to justified. It’s government spending that that has to be justified. I realize that is contrary to virtually every news report and analysis of President Bush’s plan to cut income tax rates. To listen to the news media, you’d think the government creates the wealth in ...

Kill the Death Tax

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2001

Are we supposed to be impressed that some of the country’s richest men want the government to continue taxing estates? I don’t see why their opinion on this matter is worth more than that of anyone else. After all, just because someone is good at making money, that doesn’t make ...

The Disunited States of Europe: The Politics of Power and Privilege, Part 1

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2001

Part 1 | Part 2 The corrosive effects that may occur from a spirit of political and economic nationalism were understood long before the disastrous consequences experienced as a result of them in the 20th century. In 1759, in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith warned against the danger residing within any strongly held nationalist ...

What Happened to the Conservatives?

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2001

Are conservatives so desperate to have a Republican in the White House that they are ready to toss their principles overboard and become boosters for whatever President George W. Bush hands them? It seems so. Mr. Bush’s two earliest initiatives — education and aid to faith-based organizations — should have ...

The Chavez Tragedy

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2001

PRESIDENT BUSH’S first choice for secretary of labor, Linda Chavez, was forced to withdraw when it was learned that 10 years earlier a Guatemalan woman who was then in the United States illegally lived in her home. Chavez caused herself trouble by saying she did not know until later that the woman was an “illegal alien.” Then she conceded ...

The Brookings Loony List

by James Bovard March 1, 2001

FANS OF LEVIATHAN received a gift a few days before last Christmas from the Brookings Institution, Washington’s most respected liberal think tank. Brookings’s Paul Light polled 450 political scientists and historians to come up with a list of “Government’s Greatest Achievements of the Past Half Century.” Light has done some excellent work in the past but succumbed to his enthusiasm ...

The Return to a Global Economy

by Ian Vasquez March 1, 2001

AFTER TWO WORLD WARS, the Great Depression, and experiments with socialism interrupted the liberal economic order that began in the 19th century, the world economy has now returned to the level of globalization that it previously enjoyed. By the 1970s, trade as a share of world economic output had already reached its pre–World War I height. During the past ...

Beware the Conservationists

by Sheldon Richman March 1, 2001

When politicians and political activists talk about conservation, I know I am about to be mugged. New calls for conservation have come out of the power fiasco in California. The great urban legend of our time is that California’s problem resulted from deregulation of electricity. That’s a laugh. What ...

Book Review: Global Fortune

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2001

Global Fortune: The Stumble and Rise of World Capitalism edited by Ian Vasquez (Washington, D. C.: Cato Institute, 2000); 295 pages; $18.95 cloth; $9.95 paperback. IN SEPTEMBER 2000, David Henderson, a prominent free-market economist in Great Britain, delivered the annual Wincott Lecture at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London. His theme was “Anti-Liberalism 2000.” Henderson detailed the wide and ...

The Continuing War With Iraq

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 1, 2001

A few weeks ago, under the leadership of President Bush, U.S. military forces again dropped bombs on the people of Iraq, purportedly to maintain strict control over the 10-year-old "no-fly zone" in Iraq. A couple of days ago, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell announced his support for easing the ...

Abolish the Nonessentials

by Jacob G. Hornberger February 1, 2001

THE POMP AND ceremony surrounding George W. Bush’s nomination of new department heads is now complete. The discussion and debate now center on the qualifications of each of the new nominees. But who is asking the crucial question: Rather than appointing the best-qualified people to run the various departments, why not simply abolish the departments themselves? After all, wasn’t this ...

The Fundamental Rights of the European Union: Individual Rights or Welfare-State Privileges? Part 2

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2001

Part 1 | Part 2 IN NOVEMBER 1934, during the dark years of growing tyranny throughout Europe, British historian Ramsey Muir penned a short article that appeared in the pages of the journal The Nineteenth Century and After. His theme was “civilization and liberty.” He asked how it was that of all the civilizations around the world, only the ...