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Berkeley’s Free Medical Marijuana Plan Shows Economic Thinking Has Gone to Pot
In 1996, California passed Proposition 215, making it the first state to legalize medicinal marijuana. Its passage, however, did not trump federal law, under which cannabis remains illegal as per the...
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Is Humanitarian Aid Strengthening ISIS?
Recent reports on U.S. efforts to confront the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq revealed something disturbing. As U.S. forces launch attacks against ISIS, a vast array of U.S. and other western aid has...
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I Can’t Believe There’s No Butter! Bad Trade Policy Burns Christmas Bakers
I love to cook. From my great grandmother’s recipe for fried chicken (fried in lard, of course) to my mom’s recipe for Kentucky burgoo (think stew), there are a few kitchen staples this cook can’t do...
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Employers Who Dump Workers onto Medicaid: The New Corporate Welfare Queens?
There have been a lot of predictions about the future of employer-based health benefits under Obamacare. Reports suggest that increasing numbers of small businesses are dropping health benefits and...
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GAO: Medicare, Medicaid and Veterans Health Administration at High Risk for...
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has published its annual update of federal programs “that it identifies as high risk due to their greater vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and...
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Higher Minimum Wage Leaves Working Poor Without Childcare
Oakland’s voters who approved the March 1 increase of the minimum wage to $12.25 apparently drank the Kool-aid that it would “help the poor.” Tell that to the working poor parents who will now be...
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Florida’s Financial Health Care Follies, and a Problem with a Part-Time...
The one constitutional responsibility of Florida’s legislature is to pass a budget — something Florida’s solidly Republican House and Senate could not do by the end of their regular legislative...
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What Memorial Day Should Mean
This Memorial Day we remember and honor our fellow citizens who were willing to defend our American liberties to the death. Nobel Prize–winning economist Milton Friedman was a leading proponent of...
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None “Heil” Trump
America is a country founded on the principle—regardless of how imperfectly carried out in practice—that all men* are created equal. We celebrate and honor the value of the individual, endowed...
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Government’s Burden on Young Americans
The Independent Institute’s Love Gov videos offer an amusing look at the raw deal government policies give to America’s youth. In the videos, sometimes government tempts young people into bad deals,...
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Big Government Creates Political Polarization
We’ve heard it said that politics is more polarized today than in the past. If that’s true (and I’m not sure it is), big government is likely to blame. I recently noted that politics creates conflict....
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Keep the Immigrants, Dump Trump’s Immigration Policies
Regardless of whether you find him remarkable or repulsive, there is no denying that the political machine known as Donald Trump has gone further than pretty much anyone anticipated. From winning key...
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An 1883 Memo to Bernie, Hillary, and Donald on How to Help Ordinary People:...
William Graham Sumner In 1883, William Graham Sumner wrote a series of essays for Harper’s Weekly, which paid him $50 apiece. The excerpted essay below on “The Forgotten Man” is as relevant today as in...
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Why One in Five Americans Are on Government Assistance (in One Image)
More than 52 million people in the United States, 21 percent of the population, participate in major means-tested government assistance programs each month, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. More...
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Why America Is Increasingly Divided (and James Madison Would Have Predicted It)
In 1925, President Calvin Coolidge famously said that the “chief business of the American people is business.” Today, however, this could be reworded as “the business of the American people is...
View ArticleAlexis de Tocqueville on “Democratic” Socialism
July 29 marked the anniversary of Alexis de Tocqueville’s birth in 1805. Perhaps known best for his influential two-volume work Democracy in America published in January 1835, Tocqueville was no...
View ArticleThree Assumptions the Left Makes About Economic Inequality
Too often, public policy discussions about economic redistribution do not make a clear distinction between the goals of helping those in poverty and reducing inequality. The implied assumption is that...
View ArticleHow to Fix a Perverse Coronavirus Incentive and Get More Americans Back to Work
If you were laid off from your job, and you could collect more from unemployment benefits than you could get from being rehired at your regular pay, would you go back to work at your old employer if...
View ArticleP. J. O’Rourke (1947–2022)
We were greatly saddened by the news that our very dear friend Patrick Jake “P.J.” O’Rourke had passed away on February 15th, at the age of 74, of complications from lung cancer. P.J. was peerless as a...
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