I had a strong sense of déjà vu when I read this Wall Street Journal editorial about Argentina’s harassment of a U.S. printing company for closing a plant in Buenos Aires. Why did this sound so familiar?
The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview ARI senior fellow and chief content officer Onkar Ghate on how the concept of individual rights can and should guide our thinking about political issues, including the welfare state.
Steve Simpson interviews ARI fellow Don Watkins about his new book, RooseveltCare: How Social Security Is Sabotaging the Land of Self-Reliance, and about the myths surrounding Social Security.
You may have heard about “inversions,” which have become a hot topic of debate in the wake of Burger King’s acquisition of Tim Hortons. Megan McArdle provides some much-needed context for that debate (although my jaw dropped when I got to her line about “what you owe the government that raised you”). Cato Institute scholar and Debt Dialogues guest Dan Mitchell has more.
The Debt Dialogues is a weekly podcast that aims to educate young people about the welfare state and how it will affect their future. In this episode, I interview Cato senior fellow Jagadeesh Gokhale on America’s entitlement-fueled debt problem.
In Free Market Fairness, Brown University political science professor John Tomasi seeks to defend free markets on a Rawlsian “social justice” foundation. In laying the groundwork for his argument, Tomasi thinks it is notable that even most free-market thinkers appeal to “social justice” concerns, i.e., that they almost all — from Adam Smith to Herbert Spencer to Milton Friedman — stress that free markets are good for “the poor.”
From Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia: Often people who do not wish to bear risks feel entitlement to rewards from those who do win; yet these same people do not feel obligated to help out by sharing the losses of those who bear risks and lose. [p. 257] This made me think of the people who argue that Walmart has an obligation to pay its workers more rather than allow the profits to go to the owners.
Here’s how welfare state crusader Dean Baker starts his latest column: The very rich don’t think very highly of the rest of us. This fact is driven home to us through fluke events, like the taping of Mitt Romney’s famous 47 percent comment, in which he trashed the people who rely on Social Security, Medicare, and other forms of government benefits.
I’ve entered Think Freely Media’s 2014 Great Communicators Tournament, which asks entrants to make moral argument for freedom. I hope you’ll take a moment to vote for my entry, and to share it with your friends. You can vote once a day, every day, until September 2.
A USA Today editorial this week calls for the FDA to be stripped of its power to decree whether dying patients can take experimental drugs that could save their lives. Patients and doctors, the editors write, should be allowed to make this decision without needing the government's permission.
