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
Democracies have had their share of wartime civil libertarian outrages, despite the guarantees of constitutions and bills of rights. In Britain , at the outset of World War I, the passage of the Defense of the Realm Act--an act that destroyed the liberties of many Englishmen--led to such an environment of repression that even the English monarchy
Government rail buffs, bureaucrats, and the friends of big government are resting easy these days. The big bad Amtrak Reform Council, which was charged with cleaning up the mess created by almost 32 years of government passenger railroad system, turned out to be nothing more than a cute little poodle. The council offered no radical privatization
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
As one reads the latest volume in Robert Caro’s landmark biographical series of Lyndon Baines Johnson, one thinks of Lord Acton and F.A. Hayek. Acton--the friend of the South who described its struggle in the Civil War as the Second War of American Independence--once wrote that great men are usually evil men. Clearly, if one is to measure the
Harvey Pitt should just give up. Once again, our government is pursuing a futile quest. The idea of regulation has never and will never work effectively. Still, the regulators always say we need more of them, despite a record of failure as enviable and consistent as that of the Chicago Cubs or the pathetic New York City Board of Education. It is
A small park in the middle of Manhattan stands out at first sight. It appears to be cleaner. No matter the time of day one goes for a stroll there, one always seems to come across people cleaning up the place. There are restaurants and sandwich shops doing a brisk business in this park, which is behind the New York Public Library. This little
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
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.