One’s chance of winning a top prize in one of the rigged state lotteries is so close to zero as to be indistinguishable from zero. That’s what Professor A. K. Dewdney wrote in his book 200% of Nothing . He estimated the chance of winning a big prize in a state lottery as 1 in 13,983,816. California lottery commission officials apparently don’t
The Section 31(a) tax, the little-known stock transaction fee that evolved into another tax for the federal government while arrogating billions of dollars from the pockets of investors, is finally going to be reformed. Congress recently gave final approval to the “Investors and Capital Markets Fee Relief Act” (HR 1088), which President Bush is
The official credo of government regulators ought to be: “The more we screw up, the more of us you’re going to pay for.” Who taught me this lesson in civics? Recently, I attended the Security Traders Association (STA) congressional conference in Washington. The buzz at the conference was about Enron and the failures of the United States Securities
What the terrorists didn’t do to New York, the politicians will. Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently signed an 18 percent real estate tax increase into law. This was designed to close the city’s $5 billion dollar budget gap, a remarkable amount of red ink given that the city’s bloated budget is some $42 billion. The Republican mayor was determined
The Free Market 20, no. 1 (January 2002) And you thought the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) was only for fat cats! The hired help on the Potomac, many of whom reluctantly approved a piddly little tax cut this summer, are going to give a new meaning, over the next few years, to that wonderful principle of fiscal skullduggery and political
Social Security was not just about the provision of publicly funded old-age pensions in the name of social insurance. It was designed as a tool of macroeconomic policy, a social arm of central planning passed in age of boundless faith in the power of the state. As such, the program was steeped in economic fallacy and became an integral part of 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.