The Free Market 13, no. 12 (December 1995) If it had the will, Congress could kill the redistributionist monster, the Welfare State, that’s consumed at least $5 trillion in wealth since the Great Society. How? Cut anywhere and everywhere, abolish whole agencies, and return the $350 billion saved from next year’s spending to the taxpayers in the
The Free Market 14, no. 1 (January 1996) Once again, a national gay rights bill is before Congress, with the difference that, this time, it has President Clinton’s endorsement. For the first time, an American President has put the power and prestige of his office behind a gay version of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, to outlaw discrimination against
The Free Market 14, no. 4 (April 1996) In the welfare debates, Congress spared what is perhaps the most objectionable part of the welfare state, cash subsidies for illegitimate children. The opponents had committed a terrible error early in the debate. They granted the first philosophical assumption of the program’s supporters: that we all
The Free Market 14, no. 6 (June 1996) “Every great statesman must necessarily fail,” wrote Andrew Lytle in a moving tribute to John C. Calhoun. The reason: the statesman is driven by high ideals like freedom, self-government, justice, and constitutionalism, which will never be perfectly realized. Yet even in failure, the statesman preserves
The Free Market 14, no. 8 (August 1996) A premise many conservatives share with liberals is that government largess harms its beneficiaries. Welfare supposedly creates dependence and “traps” its recipients in poverty. Much as the poor want to support themselves and their families, they are lured into sloth by Aid to Families with Dependent
The Free Market 14, no. 8 (August 1996) In a truly free society, it wouldn’t matter who the president was. We wouldn’t have to vote or pay attention to debates. We could ignore campaign commercials. There would be no high stakes for ourselves, our families, or the country. Liberty and property would be so secure that we could curse him, love
The Free Market 14, no. 12 (December 1996) According to official history, the 104th Congress doomed itself when it shut down the government to force its budget priorities on the president. People got up in arms and demanded that government be reopened. This taught the people and their representatives a valuable lesson. As much as we may
The Free Market 14, no. 12 (December 1996) The big 2000 is approaching, and with it comes renewed interest in millennialism and the Book of Revelation. Everyone is looking for signs of something to happen, either cataclysmic or glorious. Will the Kingdom of God be established on earth? If so, what will it look like and who will be its prophet?
The Free Market 15, no. 1 (January 1997) Which is a greater cause of cultural and moral decline: the private sector or the government? Asked another way, which is doing more to promote a return to civilized social norms: the market or the central state? The answer highlights a dividing line between left and right. Robert Bork’s book Slouching
The Free Market 15, no. 2 (February 1997) Before the mid 1950s, there was no “retirement” as we use the term today. A 1950 poll showed most workers aspired to work for as long as possible. Quitting was for the disabled. Life did not offer “twilight years,” two decades of uninterrupted leisure courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. Just since 1960, the
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.