Balanced-Budget Baloney by Laurence M. Vance August 1, 2018 It wasn’t that long ago (1987) that the entire budget of the federal government was “only” a trillion dollars. It reached the $2 trillion mark in 2002, and didn’t exceed $3 trillion until 2009. Even after a long series of budget deficits, the national debt didn’t exceed $1 trillion dollars until 1982 and $5 trillion until 1996. The first budget that Donald Trump proposed soon after taking office was $4.094 trillion, even though federal government receipts were projected to be only $3.654 trillion. Now the federal budget is well over $4 trillion a year, the budget deficit is approaching $1 trillion a year, and the national debt is more than $21 trillion. Even worse, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects federal spending to grow by $329 billion from fiscal year 2018 (which began on Oct. 1, 2017) to fiscal 2019 (which begins on Oct. 1, 2018). The CBO also projects federal spending to grow by approximately $3 trillion over the ...
Steve Horwitz Is Wrong, On Both Liberty and Methodology by Jacob G. Hornberger July 30, 2018 AUTHOR’S NOTE: On July 13, the Cato Institute published on its website libertarianism.org an article entitled “The Errors of Nostalgi-tarianism” by Steve Horwitz, a libertarian economics professor at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Horwitz’s article was a critique of a fundraising letter that I recently sent to supporters of The Future of Freedom Foundation requesting help with upgrading our website and with an outreach campaign that we are launching to find new libertarians. On July 23, I sent a response to Horwitz’s article to an editor at Cato, requesting that they share it with the readers of libertarianism.org. One of Cato's associate editors informed me that they would not post my response because, he said, it did not “meet libertarianism.org’s editorial standards.” He informed me that they would be open to reconsidering their decision if I met three conditions: (1) I revise my response to their satisfaction; (2) I delete the section of my response that explains FFF’s methodology for advancing liberty; ...
A Critique of My Fundraising Letter … From a Libertarian by Jacob G. Hornberger July 10, 2018 Every time I think I have seen it all, I discover that I haven’t. Yesterday, for the first time in the 28-year history of The Future of Freedom Foundation, I was critiqued for what I wrote in a fundraising letter that we just sent out to our supporters. In the letter, we are asking our supporters to help us augment our Internet presence, with the aim of finding more people who are attracted to FFF’s principled methodology for advancing liberty. The critique came in the form of a post on Facebook by libertarian professor Steve Horwitz, who teaches economics at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Here is Horwitz’s post: Quiz time. What's wrong with the argument below and how can it help explain the problems libertarians face in expanding our numbers? (The irony is that it's in an appeal to help this organization find more libertarians!) "My favorite period in U.S. history is the latter part of the 1800s. It wasn’t ...
The Revolutions of Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson by Jacob G. Hornberger July 3, 2018 One of the most fascinating aspects of Independence Day is that the year the Declaration of Independence was signed — 1776 — was the same year that saw the publication of Adam Smith’s famous treatise on economics, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. That is quite a coincidence, one that had ...
Nonintervention: America’s Founding Foreign Policy by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2018 On the Fourth of July, 1821, John Quincy Adams delivered one of the most remarkable speeches in U.S. history. Having gone down in history with the title “In Search of Monsters of Destroy,” Adams’s speech summarized the founding foreign policy of the United States. Adams pointed out that there are lots of bad things that happen around the world. Brutal ...
How to Drain the Swamp: End the Failed War on Drugs, Part 2 by David Stockman July 1, 2018 Part 1 | Part 2 According to the most comprehensive investigations, the United States spends nearly $50 billion per year on the war on drugs — including about $34 billion annually at the state and local level for police, courts, and incarceration. By contrast, it is estimated that were drugs to be legalized and taxed at the ...
Five Hundred Days of the Welfare/Warfare/Police State by Laurence M. Vance June 28, 2018 Earlier this month, Donald Trump reached his 500th day in office. A White House “Fact Sheet” touted “Trump’s 500 Days of American Greatness.” Many Republicans and conservatives were jubilant, and sang Trump’s praises. And of course, Trump himself, on his 500th day in office, tweeted that he had “accomplished a lot — many ...
Pence’s Hypocritical Speech to the OAS by Jacob G. Hornberger June 6, 2018 In a speech this week to the Organization of American States, Vice President Mike Pence issued the standard, obligatory denunciation of the communist regime in Cuba, which the U.S. national-security establishment (i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA) have targeted for regime change ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959. Pence stated: In Cuba, the Castro name has begun ...
A Divergent Convergence of Epic Proportions by Laurence M. Vance June 6, 2018 Social Security is in dire straits. Payroll tax increases and benefit cuts are on the horizon. According to the latest annual report by the Social Security Board of Trustees (“The 2017 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Federal Disability Insurance Trust Funds”), Social Security’s combined trust funds face ...
Leave Social Security out of It by Laurence M. Vance June 1, 2018 It was twenty-five years ago that the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) was passed by a Democrat-controlled Congress under Bill Clinton. Although it had minimal Republican support, current efforts to expand the FMLA’s provisions are being spearheaded by Republicans. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the FMLA “entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave ...
Time to End Foreign Aid to Israel (and Everyone Else) by Jacob G. Hornberger May 17, 2018 Given the recent shooting of unarmed Palestinian protestors at the hands of Israeli soldiers, leaving 58 people killed and 2,700 injured, isn’t it time for the American people to be asking the following question about the role of the federal government in the lives of the American people: Why should any American be forced to subsidize the salaries of ...
The Conservative Creed, Part 2 by Jacob G. Hornberger April 24, 2018 ALMOST SOLD OUT! COME TO CHARLESTON! The Ron Paul Institute and The Future of Freedom Foundation are co-hosting a conference on U.S. foreign policy in Charleston, SC, on Sunday, April 29, from 1-5 pm. Speakers: Ron Paul, Dan McAdams, Richard Ebeling, and Jacob Hornberger, with special guest Congressman Mark Sanford. Details here. *** The Conservative Creed ...
