Free trade creates wealth, writes Gary Galles. But when free trade threatens the wallets of interest groups, support for government restrictions to protect them in order to assure "fair" trade suddenly blossoms--only because that sounds better than "gimme money." It is still just a form of welfare, which can only impoverish Americans by restricting our access to lower-cost sources of supply.
In his first inaugural address, Lincoln said he had no intention of disturbing slavery, and he appealed to all his past speeches to any who may have doubted him. But with the tariff it was different, notes Thomas DiLorenzo. Lincoln was willing to launch an invasion that would ultimately cost the lives of 620,000 Americans to prove his point.
The free market is not a panacea. It does not eliminate old age, and it won't guarantee you a date for Saturday night. Private enterprise is fully capable of awful screw-ups. But both theory and practice indicate that its screw-ups are less pervasive and more easily corrected than those of government enterprises, including regulatory ones.
While it is morally reprehensible to hate, in a true free market the freedom of citizens to associate with whom they wish must be upheld and private property rights must be enforced. There should be neither forced association nor forced disassociation. This is the social foundation of the free-market economy.
A new study has been seized upon by proponents as a "proof text" against critics of living-wage laws. The success claimed for such policies by that study, however, is, in fact, far less than implied by the innumerable "Living Wage Laws Reduce Poverty" stories it has spawned. At most, the study only shows that some low-income workers may gain more than other low-income workers lose.
Can there be a right to freedom of speech without that right being firmly based on property rights?
The idea of the steel tariff is to help one inefficient, bloated, and pampered industry at the expense of all U.S. consumers of steel, including U.S. businesses, and all producers in Europe, Asia, Brazil, and Australia. This brazen protectionism is deeply harmful all around, not to mention morally repugnant.
A quarter century ago, there was a gasoline crisis--caused more by gasoline price controls than OPEC--which convinced Congress that Americans were not competent to make their own automotive choices. Thus, CAFE standards were born. They were intended to force us to get better mileage by imposing harsh penalties on any automaker whose fleet did not meet rising fuel economy standards. The Senate rejected an increase but what about existing rules?
Using changes in the margin regulation as a stick to beat the stock bubble does not work, fails to solve the underlying problem, and further injures investors by restricting their choices. What Fed Chairman Greenspan didn't know is something that the young Greenspan and his mentor Ludwig von Mises did: that monetary freedom is the way to end market bubbles once and for all.
A heritage of honesty and hard work are marvelous tools for papering over the failures of welfarism and subtle servitude. With the right attitude, a prison population can settle into a comfortable and egalitarian existence, one that might even impress Queen Catherine passing by on a boat. Such is the case in Denmark today.
