Yes, the Latest Bank Bailout Is Really a Bailout, and You Are Paying for It.

2023-02-22

When advocates of secession in the United States bring up “national divorce,” a common objection we hear is that secession can’t be allowed because it would make some people worse off. For example, we’re told that if, say, a majority of Floridians voted to secede, that still can’t be allowed because there would still be a minority that opposes secession. We especially hear this in the context of so-called red states—where, presumably, a majority of residents are some sort of conservative or Republican. It is assumed that if those states seceded, “progressives” or Democrats would be worse off. But this works in the other direction also. Several years ago, when the topic of California secession was in the news, we were told that if the presumably left-wing state of California were allowed to

2023-02-20

After the recent midterm election, when it became apparent that Americans would have a divided new Congress, it wasn’t long before the word bipartisan started showing up as an adjective to modify a whole host of legislative proposals and discussions. While in many cases the word has been aspirational rather than descriptive—as in, “the other side should follow our lead in agreeing to this”—it has often also been used as a magic modifier in an effort to reduce criticism and grease the skids to more political support for proposals.
Unfortunately, especially with the country as sharply divided as it is now, what is advertised as political efforts at bipartisanship often founders on the shoals of claims that only “comprehensive” reforms are worthy of support. And President Biden’s State of the

2023-02-18

On April 23, 2003, in South Side Chicago, Reverend Jeremiah Wright cursed America for treating blacks as less than human.
Such harsh rhetoric should not seem surprising given the US government’s history of involvement in race relations. Judge Andrew P. Napolitano takes us through that history in his book Dred Scott’s Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America.
Most readers have heard about black lynchings that gripped the South for generations following the War for Southern Independence. But how many know lynchings were often a major social event? “Witnesses often included the entire white community,” Napolitano tells us,
and, in many cases, the victim’s body was cut up and pieces were handed out as souvenirs. . . .
The local police, governments of each Southern state, and

2023-02-17

In her article “Multinationals Make Obscene Profits Out of Global Crises—Tax Them to Defend Human Rights,” Magdalena Sepúlveda called for more taxation of multinational corporations and the rich as a means to finance policies that are aimed at protecting the most vulnerable from what she calls “the cost of living crisis.” In this piece, I would like to respond to Sepúlveda by saying that taxation is theft and any attempt at justifying taxation, especially for charity, will lead to irrational conclusions.
From my understanding of Sepúlveda’s piece, it appears that she adopts the philosophy of social democracy. Such a philosophy is a subcategory of socialism and distinguishes itself by advocating for relatively stronger private property rights when compared to Marxism and Leninism, both of

2022-12-05

Total employed workers fell for the second month in a row in November, dropping nearly 400,000 workers below the pre-pandemic peak in February 2020. According to new employment data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, the current population survey shows employed workers fell to 158,470,000 in November, down 138,000 from October’s total of 158,608,000.