Austin Padgett



Articles by Austin Padgett

Another Reason Why Individual Freedom Is So Much Better than Central Planning

Much of the developed world is slipping into a hyperregulated malaise. Growth rates are down across most major economies, and the developing countries are catching up to our errors almost as fast as they are growing. Increasingly, even in the US you would have to be outside the norm to afford a house by age forty. The median age of a first-time homebuyer in 2023 is the same as a repeat buyer in 1981. We’re not allowed to build and grow, but we’re told everything is ok as long as the stock market hasn’t crashed. When we point out the system isn’t working, we are told we should be happy because degrowth is good for the environment.
It is time people stopped feeling obligated to justify their existence to a managerial class of unelected bureaucrats. Their incompetence and capture to powerful

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Back to the Future Morphs into Dystopia

It is 2023, eight years after 2015, the year of flying cars and climate-controlled clothing that Marty McFly traveled to in a time machine. In our own world, the ruling elite wants to ban cars to control the climate. How did we get here? What caused the discrepancy between our vision of a more advanced future and the reality we face now?
We had reason to expect it. From 1860–1970, the United States grew at an average of over 5 percent per year. But starting in the 1970s, and for the last five decades since then, America has experienced an average GDP growth rate of 2.7 percent. Had the previous growth rate continued, the economy would be at least 65 percent larger than it is today. The current GDP would be an additional $15 trillion, or $45,000 per capita.
The gap in unrealized potential

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