I did something yesterday that I have not done in a very long time—I voted. No, I didn’t vote for a Republican or a Democrat. I voted against a tax. The state in which I live (Florida) has a sales tax rate of 6 percent. Each of the 67 counties in Florida has an option to add on a discretionary sales surtax. Only 9 counties have not done so. My
Iran has been concerned about threats of economic sanctions since the beginning of the year . But why? If trading with another country is bad, as we are continually told by nationalist conservatives and some well-known economists, then Iran should rejoice if the whole world refused to trade with it. Sanctions should be looked upon as a great
Eleven states ban or restrictions hunting on Sunday: CT, DE, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NC, PA, SC, VR, WV. According the an article earlier this week in USA Today (Oct. 3, p. 15A), some states are considering lifting their bans/restrictions. In a related article on the following page, hunters argue the pros and cons of Sunday restrictions on hunting.
I am pleased to announce that Abel Upshur’s 132-page book A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of Our Federal Government: Being a Review of Judge Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States has now been reprinted as No. 120 of my Classic Reprints series. Here is a brief description: Virginian statesman and legal
The wonderful series of articles (”Beward of Income-Tax Casuistry”) on the income tax in the August, September, and October issues of Freedom Daily by Sheldon Richman is not online yet, but it is worth getting a copy of the three issues from the Future of Freedom Foundation . Among other things, Richman shows that the federal government can tax
Not only should we abolish the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau , we need to abolish the FDA as well since it recently approved the mass medication of Americans with a harmful substance. According to the American Dental Association , the FDA has now approved dental claims on bottles of fluoridated water which say that drinking fluoridated
As I pointed out in “ The Kelo Backlash Begins ,” Alabama was the first state to curb eminent domain abuse after the Supreme Court’s infamous Kelo decision. Now we see that in the election last month voters in seven states (FL, GA, MI, NV, NH, ND, SC) approved constitutional amendments prohibiting the use of eminent domain to transfer land to
Although the FairTax would eliminate the filing of all individual tax returns, the FairTax turns every business into a tax collector. Every small service business and every Internet business that does not currently collect state sales taxes will have to collect taxes for the federal government. Every doctor will now have to charge sales tax on his
The March issue of Reason magazine contains an interesting interview with the Fox News Channel’s Judge Andrew Napolitano about government and his new book Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws . Here are portions of a couple of key exchanges: Reason: How do you feel about Alberto Gonzales as attorney general?
A reader of my recent article, “The Curse of the Withholding Tax,” received, directly from Milton Friedman, this quote from his memoirs, Two Lucky People (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998, p. 123), about his role in the withholding tax: “Far more important, without a system of current collection, it would have been impossible to collect the amount of
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.