Dr. William C. Padgett is a retired optometrist who has been trying to bring an elderly care facility to Beaufort County, North Carolina, for over a decade. “Our senior citizens,” he laments, “are finding that it is difficult and in many cases impossible to find an appropriate long-term care facility locally.” Though he has received …
Given the enormous role that the welfare-warfare state plays in American life, it is always easy for libertarians to find deprivations of liberty, such as coerced charity, drug war incarcerations, the IRS, torture, surveillance, and assassination. Infringements on fundamental rights and liberties have become such an integral part of daily life that many Americans have …
There’s plenty of gushing about the Janet Yellen appointment as Federal Reserve Chairman. Yale economist Robert Shiller says she’s “a real mensch.” Greg Mankiw from Harvard says President Obama made a great decision in choosing her. “Reports of Janet Yellen’s forthcoming nomination will be greeted well by market agents,” says David Kotok. “It should be.” …
New York seems to have more than its fair share of knuckleheads. Paul Krugman and Tom Friedman are both stalwart columnists in The New York Times. And there’s staff writer James Surowiecki at The New Yorker. More about that in a minute… First, investors are taking it easy… distracted by barbeques, family reunions, and the …
In 1985, Irwin Schiff wrote in what has become a classic book, How an Economy Grows and Why It Doesn’t, a pictorial introduction to basic economics. Now his sons are taking up where he left off.
I just spoke to a friend, Skinner Layne, who is from Arkansas, but now lives in Santiago, Chile. He emigrated there and is now heading a startup enterprise that is showing great promise. It is called Exosphere. I asked him about the backstory to the company. It turns out that he moved in 2008, six …
It’s second-term scandal season in Washington, D.C. The folks at Fox are eating it up. But over at MSNBC, not so much. First it was Hillary Clinton’s role in Benghazi; then the AP wiretapping; and of course, the IRS looks more evil, stupid, and wasteful with each passing day. More scandals than usual? Hardly. Remember …
It’s Istanbul, not Constantinople, as the song goes. In this history is an omen for any powerful state (read: the U.S.). A somewhat obscure essayist knew all about it back in 1959. His little book deserves wider circulation. Below, we’ll take a look. Constantinople was once the seat of a vast, rich empire. The successor …
We’ve been telling anyone who will listen that the Fed has gone where the central bank has never gone before. Pre-crisis, the Fed’s available resource looked like it always had in the postwar period. Nearly overnight, thanks to its magical money creating powers of buying debt with funds it created, the Fed’s balance sheet shot …
I was standing outside the hotel when a gigantic bus rolled up. It was a double-decker and seemed as long as a city block. One hundred-plus people poured out. Once empty, the bus drove on. I stood there right in the path of the exhaust fumes. It was a cloud of gray, bellowing like a …