Category Archives: Economist Dan Mitchell

No Longer the Democratic Party of JFK

No Longer the Democratic Party of JFK

Star Parker @UrbanCURE / November 13, 2020 /22 Comments

Today, speaking about the ideals of America’s founding as President John F. Kennedy did opens one up to being called a racist. Pictured: Kennedy relaxes in his trademark rocking chair in the Oval Office Jan. 1, 1960. (Photo: CORBIS/Corbis/Getty Images)

COMMENTARY BY

Star Parker@UrbanCURE

Star Parker is a columnist for The Daily Signal and president of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education.

In this current era of no compulsory military service, Veterans Day takes on personal meaning to fewer and fewer Americans.

When the country transitioned to a voluntary military in 1973, about 1% of the population served on active duty. Today, it is less than one-half of 1%.

But perhaps we can take it further and say that the idea of compulsory service of any kind has personal meaning to fewer and fewer Americans.

This brings to mind the famous words of newly elected President John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address, on Jan. 20, 1961, 60 years before our next president will be administered the oath of office, in January 2021.

The left is actively working to undermine the integrity of our elections. Read the plan to stop them now. Learn more now >>

Kennedy said, “And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”

Reading over Kennedy’s words from that time, one can barely recognize the country he was speaking to. Nor is Kennedy’s Democratic Party, whose mantle he carried, recognizable compared with what it has become today.

Today, amid the politics of blame, grievance, and victimhood, it has been all but forgotten that the Democratic Party once delivered a president who spoke about national service and self-sacrifice.

Here’s how Kennedy opened that address: “The world is very different now. … And yet, the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe—the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”

When Kennedy spoke those words, in public school, American children were still allowed to read from the Bible and pray.

Abortion was illegal.

Seventy-five percent of American adults ages 18 and above were married, compared with 50% today.

A little over 5% of American babies were born to unwed mothers, compared with over 40% today.

The national debt stood at 53% of the gross domestic product, or GDP. The Congressional Budget Office projects national debt will reach 98% of GDP this year, 107% of GDP by 2023 (the highest in the nation’s history), and 195% by 2050.

The legislation that most defined Kennedy’s short presidency was one of the most sweeping cuts of taxes in American history. Marginal tax rates were cut 30% over two years, and corporate tax rates were reduced.

The result was a surge in the economy and revenues to the federal government. As reported by Cato Institute scholar Alan Reynolds, federal revenues rose 29% over the four years following those tax cuts.

Did the United States have problems in 1960? Of course. We know about the racial problems. It was not until 1964 that the Civil Rights Act was passed.

But failure to live up to ideals is a problem in man, not in the ideals.

Today, speaking about the ideals of America’s founding—speaking about one free nation under God, as Kennedy did—opens one up to being called a racist.

America’s minorities today constitute America’s future. Fifty-nine percent of minorities are under the age of 37. Forty-three percent of the white population is under 37.

These nonwhite Americans will inherit a country strapped with staggering debt, a country of broken families, a country that is aging due to diminishing birth rates, a country of sluggish economic growth due to big government and socialism.

Black and Hispanic Americans should think about whether this is the country they really want for their children and grandchildren. Or whether they would prefer the ideals of one nation under God, the founding ideals that Kennedy talked about, where individuals seek personal responsibility to build and be part of and serve something greater than themselves.

In other words, whether they really want to be free.

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Top liberals say Democrats should move to Georgia to help Senate candidates win

“Felony to vote in Georgia elections if you are not a legal resident or if you are residing in the state briefly with the intention just to vote “
 
 
 

Some top liberals are suggesting that Democrats move to Georgia so they can vote in the upcoming runoffs to pick two U.S. senators, hoping they can change the outcome of the elections.

“The best thing we could do for Joe is to get him a Democratic Senate,” former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang wrote on Twitter. “There should be coordination of resources. Everyone who campaigned for Joe should get ready to head to Georgia. I’ll go. It’s the only way to sideline Mitch and give Joe a unified government,” he wrote, referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden.

“There isn’t much time,” Yang added. “The earliest date for absentee ballots to be mailed for the runoff is Nov. 18. The registration deadline is Dec. 7. The In-person early voting begins Dec. 14.”

With Republican Dan Sullivan winning the Senate race Alaska on Wednesday, the GOP now hold an edge in the Senate 50-48.

The other two seats are both in Georgia. Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue holds just below 50% of the vote in the state over Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff. In the state, winners must top 50% or the race goes into a runoff, set for Jan. 5. Also that day, a special election between Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock for the state’s other Senate seat will be held.

Yang isn’t the only one urging Democrats to move to Georgia. “I hope everyone moves to Georgia in the next month or two, registers to vote, and votes for these two Democratic senators,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said in a CNN interview this week.

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David Barton

1 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton

 

2 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton

barton videos

4 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton

Where things stand in the House

The Democrats majority is shrinking and three dozen races have yet to be called

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s majority has shrunk in House, a shock to Democrats and pollsters who were projecting the California Democrat would expand her caucus after Tuesday’s election.

Democrats were optimistic they could flip roughly 10 seats but their expansion efforts came up short, especially in Texas, and they ended up losing seats in Flordia, Oklahoma, Minnesota and elsewhere.

DEM CAUCUS ERUPTS AS MEMBERS SAY PARTY’S LEFTWARD DRIFT HURT MODERATES IN ELECTION

As of 3 p.m. on Friday, Democrats had won 212 seats compared to Republicans’ 194. Another 29 races have yet to be called. Democrats had a net loss of four seats.

Outstanding races are in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Utah, Arizona, and elsewhere. When all those votes are counted, Republicans are optimistic their numbers could swell to 208 and beyond, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

What’s known is that Republicans have flipped at least seven seats from blue to red and an eighth seat in Michigan that was most recently occupied by a Libertarian. Here’s a snapshot of the GOP victories:

GOP gains in the House

–In Florida, Republican candidate Carlos Gimenez defeated freshman Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in the 26th district. Republican Maria Elvira Salazar defeated freshman Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala in the 27th district.

–In Oklahoma, Republican Stephanie Bice unseated freshman Democratic Rep. Kendra Horn. Horn flipped the seat from red to blue last cycle.

— In South Carolina, freshman congressman Democrat Joe Cunningham was projected to lose his reelection to state GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, flipping South Carolina’s 1st District back to red.

— In Minnesota, Republican Michelle Fischbach ousted longtime Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, toppling the powerful chairman of the House Agriculture Committee in the most pro-Trump district held by a Democrat.

— In New Mexico, Republican Yvette Herrell defeated freshman Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, a freshman Democrat who flipped the 2nd Congressional seat from red to blue in 2018.

— In Iowa’s First Congressional District, Republican state representative and former TV news anchor Ashley Hinson defeated Democratic incumbent Abby Finkenauer.

– In West Michigan, Republican Peter Meijer, an Iraq war veteran whose grandfather started Meijer superstores, defeated Democrat Hillary Scholten, a former Department of Justice and nonprofit lawyer. The Third Congressional District was open after Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, did not seek reelection.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW HOUSE RESULTS

Republicans say more victories are on the horizon

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Party officials are most optimistic about reclaiming two seats in New York that Democrats flipped in 2018. Votes are still being counted but Republican Nicole Malliotakis has a notable lead over freshman Rep. Max Rose in the Staten Island-Brooklyn district. And former GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney was also ahead in the 22nd District seat she lost two years ago to Rep. Anthony Brindisi.

Democrats have gained two open seats in North Carolina thanks to redrawn congressional maps that favored them and will welcome Deborah Ross and Kathy Manning to their caucus in January.

And Democrats flipped Georgia’s 7th Congressional District held by retiring Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga. Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux beat GOP candidate Rich McCormick in the suburban Atlanta district, the Associated Press called on Friday.

That means Democrats so far have a net loss of four seats in the House.

WHERE THINGS STAND: BATTLE FOR THE SENATE

Democrats think they can hold onto many close races that have not been called and have two other possible pick-up opportunities by defeating Rep. Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey and Rep. Mike Garcia in California.

On a call Thursday afternoon with Democratic House members, Rep. Cheri Bustos, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), expressed frustration with the polling and election forecasts that all pointed to House Democrats expanding their majority.

“I’m furious,” Bustos told her colleagues, according to a source familiar with the call. “Something went wrong here across the entire political world. Our polls, Senate polls, Gov polls, presidential polls, Republican polls, public polls, turnout modeling, and prognosticators all pointed to one political environment – that environment never materialized.”

 
 
 
 

I have written about the tremendous increase in the food stamp program the last 9 years before and that means that both President Obama and Bush were guilty of not trying to slow down it’s growth. Furthermore, Republicans have been some of the biggest supporters of the food stamp program. Milton Friedman had a good solution to help end the welfare state and wish more people would pay attention to it.   Growing government also encourages waste and hurt growth but more importantly it causes people to become dependent on the government as this article and cartoon below show.

My great fear is that the “social capital” of self reliance in America will slowly disappear and that the United States will turn into a European-style welfare state.

That’s the message in the famous “riding in the wagon” cartoons that went viral and became the most-viewed post on this blog.

Well, this Glenn McCoy cartoon has a similar theme.

Obama Voter Cartoon

The only thing I would change is that the rat would become a “pro-government voter” or “left-wing voter” instead of an “Obama voter.” Just like I wasn’t satisfied with an otherwise very good Chuck Asay cartoon showing the struggle between producers and moochers.

That’s for two reasons. First, I’m not partisan. My goal is to spread a message of liberty, not encourage people to vote for or against any candidate.

Second, I’ve been very critical of Obama, but I was also very critical of Bush. Indeed, Bush was a bigger spender than Obama! And Clinton was quite good, so party labels often don’t matter.

But I’m getting wonky. Enjoy the cartoon and feel free to share it widely.

Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth

Uploaded on Aug 17, 2009

This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video analyzes how excessive government spending undermines economic performance. While acknowledging that a very modest level of government spending on things such as “public goods” can facilitate growth, the video outlines eight different ways that that big government hinders prosperity. This video focuses on theory and will be augmented by a second video looking at the empirical evidence favoring smaller government.

Related posts:

If increase in food stamps was just because of recession then why spending go from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007?

If the increase in food stamps was just because of the recession then why did the spending go from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007? The Facts about Food Stamps Everyone Should Hear Rachel Sheffield and T. Elliot Gaiser May 27, 2013 at 12:00 pm (7) Newscom A recent US News & […]

Tell the 48 million food stamps users to eat more broccoli!!!!

Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed             Uploaded on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ We got to slow down the growth of Food Stamps. One […]

Republicans for more food stamps?

Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth __________________ We got to cut spending and we must first start with food stamp program and we need some Senators that are willing to make the tough cuts. Food Stamp Republicans Posted by Chris Edwards Newt Gingrich had fun calling President Obama the “food stamp president,” but […]

Obama promotes food stamps but Milton Friedman had a better suggestion

Milton Friedman’s negative income tax explained by Friedman in 1968: We need to cut back on the Food Stamp program and not try to increase it. What really upsets me is that when the government gets involved in welfare there is a welfare trap created for those who become dependent on the program. Once they […]

400% increase in food stamps since 2000

Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ If welfare increases as much as it has in the […]

Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration

The sad fact is that Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration. A Bumper Crop of Food Stamps Amy Payne May 21, 2013 at 7:01 am Tweet this Where do food stamps come from? They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually […]

Which states are the leaders in food stamp consumption?

I am glad that my state of Arkansas is not the leader in food stamps!!! Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which State Has the Highest Food Stamp Usage of All? March 19, 2013 by Dan Mitchell The food stamp program seems to be a breeding ground of waste, fraud, and abuse. Some of the horror stories […]

Why not cancel the foodstamp program and let the churches step in?

Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ We are becoming a country filled with people that dependent on the federal government when we should be growing our economy by lowering taxes and putting […]

Food Stamp Program is constantly ripped off and should be discontinued

Uploaded by oversightandreform on Mar 6, 2012 Learn More at http://oversight.house.gov The Oversight Committee is examining reports of food stamp merchants previously disqualified who continue to defraud the program. According to a Scripps Howard News Service report, food stamp fraud costs taxpayers hundreds of millions every year. Watch the Oversight hearing live tomorrow at 930 […]

 

Here’s the Latest on Litigation Over Election Results

Attorney General William Barr says federal prosecutors have the authority to investigate evidence of voter fraud. Pictured: Barr leaves the Capitol after meeting Monday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito ordered county election boards in Pennsylvania to comply with guidance requiring them to keep ballots received after 8 p.m. Election Day “in a safe, secure, and sealed container separate from other voted ballots,” as Newsweek and other outlets reported Friday. How could Alito’s directive affect returns for the presidential election?

Additionally, The Associated Press reported that 24 Wisconsin counties had completed canvassing of election results as of Monday morning, but that “all 72 must be in before President Donald Trump could call for a recount.” How long will that take, and will other states besides Georgia recount?

Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, joins the podcast to discuss.

We also cover these stories:

The left is actively working to undermine the integrity of our elections. Read the plan to stop them now. Learn more now >>

  • The Supreme Court hears arguments about ending Obamacare, but some conservative justices apparently don’t see a need for the health care law to be repealed in its entirety.
  • Attorney General William Barr announces that prosecutors at the Justice Department can look into evidence of voting irregularities.
  • Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., pledges that he will not support packing the Supreme Court with more justices or ending the Senate filibuster.

“The Daily Signal Podcast” is available on Ricochet, Apple PodcastsPippaGoogle Play, and Stitcher. All of our podcasts may be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You also can leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com.

Rachel del Guidice: I’m joined today on “The Daily Signal Podcast” by Jason Snead. He’s the executive director of the Honest Elections Project and also a former colleague of mine at The Heritage Foundation. Jason, it’s great to have you with us on “The Daily Signal Podcast.”

Jason Snead: It’s great to be here.

Del Guidice: Well, Jason, to start off with the question that’s really foremost on everyone’s minds, do you think there was any voter fraud in this election or any potential voter fraud?

Snead: Well, there’s always voter fraud in any election to some degree. We know that because you can look at the convictions, it’s on the Heritage voter fraud database. And you see that in essentially every election cycle there are people who are willing to cheat, willing to take illegal steps to try to rig or steal elections.

So the media narrative that you get that voter fraud just does not exist in any way, shape, or form is simply erroneous, and it has a lot more to do with political spin than with reality.

The question now seems to be, is there evidence of widespread, organized, systemic fraud that could’ve thrown a presidential election? That’s been certainly alleged by the president, by folks involved in his campaign, and his campaign’s legal team. And I think that we’re waiting to see what evidence they’ve got to back up those assertions.

So I think that we need to be, of course, keeping a close eye on that. We need to be careful not to believe necessarily every claim of fraud that we see. But I think beyond any doubt whatsoever, fraud does occur, and it probably occurred in the 2020 election as well.

Del Guidice: Since you’re saying it probably did occur, how do you think, Jason, this should be handled and investigated?

Snead: I think it should be handled carefully and deliberately. And I think that if the facts ultimately do merit prosecutions against individuals who did commit fraud, then I think the prosecutions would be justified.

But what we, I think, need to also be careful about is jumping to conclusions too quickly about the degree to which fraud occurred.

There are undoubtedly instances that are more credible than others that have already come to light. For instance, I saw a report out of Wisconsin that, I believe it was four felons voted in the 2020 election despite being apparently ineligible to do so. I believe that they were all on parole or probation.

So that sort of a thing, to my mind, would obviously be very credible. But I think that in terms of some of the grander concerns, I think that we need to see what evidence we’ve got and examine that very carefully.

Del Guidice: I’m curious about your perspective on one of the big headlines yesterday. Attorney General Bill Barr announced that he will allow the [Justice Department] to investigate voter fraud. What all does this mean, and is this appropriate?

Snead: Well, I certainly share the attorney general’s perspective, at least in so far as he spelled it out in the letter, that credible accusations of fraud or malfeasance in the elections absolutely need to be investigated.

One of the most difficult things about this area of law and policy is that proving that fraud occurred is a very difficult thing to do. And sometimes what happens is claims of fraud, even credible ones, wind up not getting investigated or not getting prosecuted, particularly after an election is over, for various reasons.

So I certainly share the sense that if you’ve got a concern that fraud could impact the election of 2020, that it ought to be investigated.

And there’s really two reasons to do that, right? One is that, of course, if the concern is valid and if fraud did occur, then you absolutely want to get to the bottom of that and bring the people who are responsible to justice.

But the flip side of that is that if fraud did not occur, then you want to be able to say with certainty that it did not happen, and here’s the evidence to rebut the concern that it did.

Because at the end of the day, you want to be able to tell voters that the election was conducted fairly, that it was conducted honestly, and that the result can be trusted.

I don’t think that you can tell voters that if the response to every single concern that gets raised either about mischief or mismanagement, which is another part of this conversation, the mismanagement of elections or bureaucratic incompetence, if all of those concerns are simply going to be brushed aside, I think that sends the wrong message to voters.

And I’m not sure that you can seriously say that you’re taking seriously the credibility of democracy if you’re just ignoring all problems.

Del Guidice: Speaking of potential issues of voter fraud, The Federalist reported on Monday that there might have been incidents of curing of ballots in Wisconsin. And this is where officials count a ballot that is legally disqualified or difficult to read.

How, Jason, do you think this should be responded to, and are there other instances of voter irregularities that you’ve heard of yourself?

Snead: We’ve been looking at some of the concerns about irregularities and trying to determine, frankly, what actually has happened in some of these places like Philadelphia, like Detroit, and elsewhere, and understand what some of the problems were.

I think that really one of the things when it comes to counting ineligible ballots and concerns about the process—which, that’s what a lot of the lawsuits that have been filed are about, is really about the process.

One of the overarching concerns that often is getting left out of media coverage is the fact that all across the country, states, particularly battleground states, wound up either changing their election rules or having those rules essentially changed for them in the course of often very partisan, very politicized lawsuits that were brought by groups on the left, including the [Democratic National Committee] itself, where they were suing to invalidate voter identification and verification requirements for absentee ballots, to try to legalize ballot harvesting, to really change the rules.

And it’s sort of similar in some respects to changing the rules of baseball in the middle of the seventh inning. No one would really think that that was entirely fair or trust that the only reason for changing the rule is just for the benefit of the fans, not because the umpire was picking favorites or picking sides. But that’s what was going on.

So that risks not only, of course, the credibility of the election, but it also risks confusion about what the rules actually are.

And so I think that one of the big lessons that we need to take away from 2020 is that rules should not be changed, particularly not through partisan lawsuits, close to an election because that really risks the integrity of the entire process.

Del Guidice: Well, Jason, even though the Biden campaign has claimed victory in the presidential election, the Trump campaign has filed lawsuits with current litigation pending in, I think, at least five states. I know in Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, and Arizona. Can you sort of walk us through the latest on what’s happening on those efforts?

Snead: Well, as I said, pretty much all of these cases at this point are talking about procedural issues that deal with the counting of votes.

So for instance, trying to get ballots that were received after a statutory deadline for the receipt of absentee ballots segregated. That happened in Pennsylvania. Concerns about poll watching. Concerns about ballots.

In Maricopa County, [Arizona], I saw one lawsuit there about ballots where the concern is about an apparent over-vote situation where, for one reason or another, the machine was reading a ballot that was cast and counting it anyway.

And the problem when you’ve got an over-vote situation is that that would essentially cancel out the votes of that particular person for, in this case, president.

So we’ve got a lot of concerns about procedure. And some of these, of course, could affect the vote count. And any lawsuit that does affect the vote count should be taken seriously.

What we’re now seeing, really what we’re now waiting to see, I think, is some of the lawsuits that could potentially affect the outcome of the election to the degree that would be necessary to overcome [former Vice President Joe] Biden’s lead in places like Pennsylvania where the separation between them is several—I think it’s about 40,000 votes, 45,000 votes at the time that we’re recording this.

Del Guidice: On Friday, Newsweek reported that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made an order saying that all county boards of election must comply with guidance that requires them to keep ballots received after 8 p.m. on Tuesday in a safe, secure, and sealed container separate from other voter ballots.

What is your perspective on this directive from Justice Alito? And what’s the update on what’s happening here as we’re now getting into the middle of the week?

Snead: Well, the order that Alito gave to segregate ballots is mostly to preserve the ability for any postelection litigation that impacts those late-arriving ballots to actually be carried out and potentially to invalidate those votes, depending on the outcome of the litigation.

The backstory here is that going into Election Day, there was a torrent of legal activity in Pennsylvania because you had a situation where the left was suing the state. The secretary of state was trying to enter into a consent decree to change the state’s ballot receipt deadline from Election Day to several days after the election.

And eventually, that wound up going to the United States Supreme Court, and the court deadlocked and split, four justices to four justices, allowing a ruling by the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court upholding that extension to be in effect for this election.

Now that case in Pennsylvania is back before the Supreme Court. There’s a cert petition pending. A number of states filed amicus briefs supporting the court taking that case.

My group has filed one, as well as others, supporting the court taking the case and deciding the issue once and for all—whether or not a court can indeed extend the statutory deadline or whether that power is vested in the legislature and the federal Constitution. And there are some variations on that question in other states as well.

So the order from Justice Alito is preserving the segregation of ballots that arrived after 8 p.m. on Election Day so that in the event that the court does take up the issue and in the event that it does rule that those ballots are constitutionally invalid, that you still know what ballots are actually affected, what the numbers are, and then you can have a remedy available to you.

Del Guidice: In terms of recounts, some states, and I know the Trump campaign is asking for those, The Associated Press reported this week that 24 counties in Wisconsin had completed their canvassing of last week’s election results as of Monday morning, but that also two counties must be in before the Trump campaign could call for a recount.

How long, Jason, do you think it will be before Wisconsin does a recount? And are there other states that you expect recounts from?

Snead: I’m not sure how long we’ll be waiting on Wisconsin, but I do expect that there will be recounts. There could potentially be a recount in Arizona. There could be a recount in Georgia.

Pennsylvania seems unlikely that if there is a recount that it would seriously affect the vote tallies just because, historically speaking, recounts don’t usually result in significant changes to the numbers.

We’re talking something on the order of hundreds or maybe a couple thousand votes at the outside. So I think that probably a recount is going to be most significant in places like Arizona and Georgia where it’s relatively closely divided.

Del Guidice: Per the Congressional Research Service, the Electoral College will be meeting in just about a month to cast their votes. And since this is just about a month away, maybe a month and a few days, how far do you think litigation will be able to progress before this vote happens?

Snead: I think that we’ve got a long way to go before we get to the meeting of the Electoral College. Of course, if you’re looking for some historical precedent here, look back to 2000 with Bush v. Gore, when the Supreme Court issued its ruling right before the safe harbor deadline.

The safe harbor deadline is the statutory deadline that Congress has set that states have to certify their elections and impanel a seat of electors for the Electoral College. And as long as they get it in before that date, then it’s not subject to second-guessing by Congress. And so that extended right up until that deadline.

So we could be looking at litigation that could stretch for the next four or five weeks until we get to the safe harbor deadline in early December this year. And I guess the alternative argument here is that the litigation could be resolved before that, but certainly we could be in for a scenario where it goes the full distance.

Del Guidice: Going back briefly to election irregularities, the Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit last month alleging that 21,000 dead people were on the Pennsylvania voter rolls before Election Day.

Jason, do you think that this impacted the election outcome, having these 21,000 people that shouldn’t have been registered still on the voter rolls?

Snead: I certainly think that it’s a concerning situation anytime you see that a state is not adequately maintaining its voter rolls because there are actually two federal laws that require that states take action to maintain clean, accurate, and reliable voter registration records. And the reasons are pretty obvious, right?

If you’re talking about having an honest and fair election, that starts with having clean voter rolls so that you actually know how many voters there are in your community and who is eligible and who is not to cast a ballot. That’s a very important thing to understand.

And every year you’ve got about 10% of the U.S. population that moves. You’ve got many millions more who either pass away or become ineligible because they’re, say, convicted of a felony. So the voter rolls are not static things. They have to constantly be updated.

But despite the fact that it is not only legally required but it’s just common sense to be cleaning up your voter rolls and removing old, outdated, or duplicative entries, that has become a very contentious process.

Many states quite deliberately drag their feet in this and do not prioritize list maintenance, even actively resist engaging in the practice. And there are a lot of outside groups on the left that will sue states trying to stop them.

So I look at examples like this as just further evidence of the fact that states are often not doing enough in this area and need to be doing more. Because, again, to get back to an earlier point, you want to be able to show voters that the system works, that it works well, that you can trust the results.

And when you see information like that coming out, that’s a very concerning thing because, yes, not only does that open up the door to fraud, but it also sends up a red flag that maybe the system is not working as well as it should.

Del Guidice: On that note, Jason, as we wrap up, many voters right now are concerned about fraud and how ballots are being counted. Do you have concerns about election integrity, specifically in this 2020 election?

Snead: Well, I do. And in fact, I’ve been concerned from the beginning because we saw almost immediately when the pandemic hit and all of the closures started that there was a concerted push to take advantage of that situation to push a political agenda that amounted to reshaping elections and doing away with lots of the basic safeguards: verification, identification, ballot harvesting bans.

You saw legislation being pushed in Congress. You saw litigation being brought in nearly every state by some very deep-pocketed liberal organizations, including the Democratic Party itself.

It was a concerted strategic push to undermine the safeguards and the rules that, by and large, Americans support and that undergird the system and provide, I think, some great benefits to help with democracy.

So I do have concerns that going forward, not only in terms of how we’re processing 2020, but then looking to future elections, I have concerns about this trend continuing where the process of voting itself is increasingly politicized, the rhetoric surrounding it is increasingly toxic.

And you’ve now got a baseline standard that really began back in 2018 with Stacey Abrams refusing to concede to her opponent in the gubernatorial race to now where you basically got a situation where if my side doesn’t win, then I think that the entire process is rigged.

I think that’s a very difficult place to be if we’re talking about the election system writ large. We need to talk about this from the issue of principles, not politics. Preserving the integrity of our elections goes hand in hand with preserving the credibility of democracy.

And I think that we need to be fighting for fair, transparent voting processes protected with things like voter ID laws, protected with ballot harvesting bans that make sure that everyone knows that their vote counts and that their voice is going to be heard

Del Guidice: What a strong note to end on. Jason, thank you so much for joining us on “The Daily Signal Podcast.” It’s great having you.

Snead: Thank you.

——

11 observations in a dark time

Dennis Prager: Leftists consider it a moral obligation to cheat in order to stop ‘dictator’ Trump

As there is too much to say in the space of one column, I will simply offer some thoughts on the state of the country a week after the 2020 elections.

No. 1: While I am not certain the reported election results are dishonest, I suspect they are. Worse, about half this country believes this, too.

This is unprecedented in American history.

One might counter that this is not unprecedented, that this was precisely what half the American electorate felt in 2000, when many Democrats rejected the 2000 Supreme Court decision regarding Florida’s ballot counting. But that was entirely different. No one alleged widespread Republican fraud in the election of George W. Bush. The issue in that extremely close election involved a faulty voting system that resulted in hand recounts using differing ballot-counting standards from one jurisdiction to the next. Liberal justices joined the 7-2 vote in ruling for Bush that the recounts could not constitutionally go forward.

Therefore, the fact that nearly half the country is far from certain that Joe Biden was honestly elected is unprecedented.

Half this country believes, with good reason, that if Democratic Party officials believe they can get away with cheating, they will do so. Aside from the Democrats having a history of ballot-manipulation, there is an even more compelling reason to believe Democrats would cheat. For four years, they have been telling the nation and telling one another that President Donald Trump is a dictator, a fascist and a white supremacist. Therefore, if a leftist considers himself a moral individual and works in tabulating election results, and he can help prevent the reelection of a white supremacist fascist dictator, wouldn’t he do so? Wouldn’t he be morally obligated to do so?

No. 2: For four years, the mainstream print and electronic media waged daily, indeed hourly, vicious attacks on Trump as a human being. Rarely did they attack his policies, since they were so beneficial to America (some of the greatest economic figures in memory and the lowest black unemployment rate ever recorded) and to the world (a major weakening of Iran and a major strengthening of Israel and Israel-Arab peace). Worse, the media and the Democratic Party immersed the country in a three-year lie about Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

Yet, 70 million Americans still voted for Trump. The Democrats lost seats in the House and will probably not gain control of the Senate, despite the larger number of Republican incumbents who were up for reelection.

Americans watched Democratic governors and mayors do nothing as left-wing thugs burned their cities. And then they watched Democratic mayors and city councils defund their police departments. That is one reason Democrats fared so badly.

No. 3: The mainstream media are now perceived as fraudulent by half of America. This has never been the case. But from The New York Times’ mendacious claim that America’s true founding was in 1619 and was founded in order to preserve slavery – for which the equally dishonest Pulitzer Prize committee awarded the paper a Pulitzer Prize – to the entire mainstream press’s ignoring of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, only left-wing Americans now believe the mainstream media.

No. 4: That is one reason the tech companies shut down conservative voices. The more people hear nonleft ideas, the more they gravitate away from the left. As a result, for the first time in American history, free speech is seriously threatened – not by government, but by private companies. Free speech is the most important freedom of all. If we lose it, it is the end of our country. What may happen then is the division of America, either formally or informally, into two nations, each with its own media and its own schools.

No. 5: Despite four years of being accused of racism and xenophobia, Trump increased both his black and Latino vote. If Trump lost honestly, it was due to his loss of the white male vote – from +31 in 2016 to +23 in 2020.

No. 6: The Democratic Party was once liberal. It is now leftist. And the left, everywhere in the world, suppresses dissent wherever it takes over – from Lenin to the modern American university to Twitter and the rest of Big Tech.

No. 7: Liberals loved America. The left loathes it. Therefore, since the left governs American education, America-hatred dominates the education system from kindergarten to graduate school. You are risking the poisoning of your children’s minds, souls and consciences by sending them to most American schools and nearly all American colleges. Don’t. Home-school, or find a school that teaches rather than indoctrinates.

No. 8: Hydroxychloroquine, one of the safest and oldest medications known to man, when given with zinc to almost anyone as soon as the individual develops symptoms or tests positive with COVID-19, prevents death and even hospitalization in the overwhelming majority of cases. History will likely note that the politicians and scientists who opposed hydroxychloroquine have a lot of blood on their hands.

No. 9: Those who can work from home are far more likely to support lockdowns than those who cannot work from home. As a rule, the former are more likely to be Democrats and more likely to be wealthier than the latter.

No. 10: All over the country, stores in big cities were boarded up solely to protect themselves from left-wing rioters should Trump have won. When Biden was declared the winner, the boards came down. Because everyone knows that conservatives don’t riot.

No. 11: If Biden wins, more and more nonleft Americans will lose their reputations, their businesses and their freedom to speak.

All of which plausibly renders the Georgia runoffs for U.S. senator the most important elections in American history.

Where things stand in the House

The Democrats majority is shrinking and three dozen races have yet to be called

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s majority has shrunk in House, a shock to Democrats and pollsters who were projecting the California Democrat would expand her caucus after Tuesday’s election.

Democrats were optimistic they could flip roughly 10 seats but their expansion efforts came up short, especially in Texas, and they ended up losing seats in Flordia, Oklahoma, Minnesota and elsewhere.

DEM CAUCUS ERUPTS AS MEMBERS SAY PARTY’S LEFTWARD DRIFT HURT MODERATES IN ELECTION

As of 3 p.m. on Friday, Democrats had won 212 seats compared to Republicans’ 194. Another 29 races have yet to be called. Democrats had a net loss of four seats.

Outstanding races are in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Utah, Arizona, and elsewhere. When all those votes are counted, Republicans are optimistic their numbers could swell to 208 and beyond, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

What’s known is that Republicans have flipped at least seven seats from blue to red and an eighth seat in Michigan that was most recently occupied by a Libertarian. Here’s a snapshot of the GOP victories:

GOP gains in the House

–In Florida, Republican candidate Carlos Gimenez defeated freshman Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in the 26th district. Republican Maria Elvira Salazar defeated freshman Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala in the 27th district.

–In Oklahoma, Republican Stephanie Bice unseated freshman Democratic Rep. Kendra Horn. Horn flipped the seat from red to blue last cycle.

— In South Carolina, freshman congressman Democrat Joe Cunningham was projected to lose his reelection to state GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, flipping South Carolina’s 1st District back to red.

— In Minnesota, Republican Michelle Fischbach ousted longtime Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, toppling the powerful chairman of the House Agriculture Committee in the most pro-Trump district held by a Democrat.

— In New Mexico, Republican Yvette Herrell defeated freshman Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, a freshman Democrat who flipped the 2nd Congressional seat from red to blue in 2018.

— In Iowa’s First Congressional District, Republican state representative and former TV news anchor Ashley Hinson defeated Democratic incumbent Abby Finkenauer.

– In West Michigan, Republican Peter Meijer, an Iraq war veteran whose grandfather started Meijer superstores, defeated Democrat Hillary Scholten, a former Department of Justice and nonprofit lawyer. The Third Congressional District was open after Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, did not seek reelection.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW HOUSE RESULTS

Republicans say more victories are on the horizon

.

Party officials are most optimistic about reclaiming two seats in New York that Democrats flipped in 2018. Votes are still being counted but Republican Nicole Malliotakis has a notable lead over freshman Rep. Max Rose in the Staten Island-Brooklyn district. And former GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney was also ahead in the 22nd District seat she lost two years ago to Rep. Anthony Brindisi.

Democrats have gained two open seats in North Carolina thanks to redrawn congressional maps that favored them and will welcome Deborah Ross and Kathy Manning to their caucus in January.

And Democrats flipped Georgia’s 7th Congressional District held by retiring Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga. Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux beat GOP candidate Rich McCormick in the suburban Atlanta district, the Associated Press called on Friday.

That means Democrats so far have a net loss of four seats in the House.

WHERE THINGS STAND: BATTLE FOR THE SENATE

Democrats think they can hold onto many close races that have not been called and have two other possible pick-up opportunities by defeating Rep. Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey and Rep. Mike Garcia in California.

On a call Thursday afternoon with Democratic House members, Rep. Cheri Bustos, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), expressed frustration with the polling and election forecasts that all pointed to House Democrats expanding their majority.

“I’m furious,” Bustos told her colleagues, according to a source familiar with the call. “Something went wrong here across the entire political world. Our polls, Senate polls, Gov polls, presidential polls, Republican polls, public polls, turnout modeling, and prognosticators all pointed to one political environment – that environment never materialized.”

I have written about the tremendous increase in the food stamp program the last 9 years before and that means that both President Obama and Bush were guilty of not trying to slow down it’s growth. Furthermore, Republicans have been some of the biggest supporters of the food stamp program. Milton Friedman had a good solution to help end the welfare state and wish more people would pay attention to it.   Growing government also encourages waste and hurt growth but more importantly it causes people to become dependent on the government as this article and cartoon below show.

My great fear is that the “social capital” of self reliance in America will slowly disappear and that the United States will turn into a European-style welfare state.

That’s the message in the famous “riding in the wagon” cartoons that went viral and became the most-viewed post on this blog.

Well, this Glenn McCoy cartoon has a similar theme.

Obama Voter Cartoon

The only thing I would change is that the rat would become a “pro-government voter” or “left-wing voter” instead of an “Obama voter.” Just like I wasn’t satisfied with an otherwise very good Chuck Asay cartoon showing the struggle between producers and moochers.

That’s for two reasons. First, I’m not partisan. My goal is to spread a message of liberty, not encourage people to vote for or against any candidate.

Second, I’ve been very critical of Obama, but I was also very critical of Bush. Indeed, Bush was a bigger spender than Obama! And Clinton was quite good, so party labels often don’t matter.

But I’m getting wonky. Enjoy the cartoon and feel free to share it widely.

Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth

Uploaded on Aug 17, 2009

This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video analyzes how excessive government spending undermines economic performance. While acknowledging that a very modest level of government spending on things such as “public goods” can facilitate growth, the video outlines eight different ways that that big government hinders prosperity. This video focuses on theory and will be augmented by a second video looking at the empirical evidence favoring smaller government.

Related posts:

If increase in food stamps was just because of recession then why spending go from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007?

If the increase in food stamps was just because of the recession then why did the spending go from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007? The Facts about Food Stamps Everyone Should Hear Rachel Sheffield and T. Elliot Gaiser May 27, 2013 at 12:00 pm (7) Newscom A recent US News & […]

Tell the 48 million food stamps users to eat more broccoli!!!!

Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed             Uploaded on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ We got to slow down the growth of Food Stamps. One […]

Republicans for more food stamps?

Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth __________________ We got to cut spending and we must first start with food stamp program and we need some Senators that are willing to make the tough cuts. Food Stamp Republicans Posted by Chris Edwards Newt Gingrich had fun calling President Obama the “food stamp president,” but […]

Obama promotes food stamps but Milton Friedman had a better suggestion

Milton Friedman’s negative income tax explained by Friedman in 1968: We need to cut back on the Food Stamp program and not try to increase it. What really upsets me is that when the government gets involved in welfare there is a welfare trap created for those who become dependent on the program. Once they […]

400% increase in food stamps since 2000

Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ If welfare increases as much as it has in the […]

Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration

The sad fact is that Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration. A Bumper Crop of Food Stamps Amy Payne May 21, 2013 at 7:01 am Tweet this Where do food stamps come from? They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually […]

Which states are the leaders in food stamp consumption?

I am glad that my state of Arkansas is not the leader in food stamps!!! Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which State Has the Highest Food Stamp Usage of All? March 19, 2013 by Dan Mitchell The food stamp program seems to be a breeding ground of waste, fraud, and abuse. Some of the horror stories […]

Why not cancel the foodstamp program and let the churches step in?

Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ We are becoming a country filled with people that dependent on the federal government when we should be growing our economy by lowering taxes and putting […]

Food Stamp Program is constantly ripped off and should be discontinued

Uploaded by oversightandreform on Mar 6, 2012 Learn More at http://oversight.house.gov The Oversight Committee is examining reports of food stamp merchants previously disqualified who continue to defraud the program. According to a Scripps Howard News Service report, food stamp fraud costs taxpayers hundreds of millions every year. Watch the Oversight hearing live tomorrow at 930 […]

 

Top liberals say Democrats should move to Georgia to help Senate candidates win

—-

Top liberals say Democrats should move to Georgia to help Senate candidates win

“Felony to vote in Georgia elections if you are not a legal resident or if you are residing in the state briefly with the intention just to vote “
 
 
 

Some top liberals are suggesting that Democrats move to Georgia so they can vote in the upcoming runoffs to pick two U.S. senators, hoping they can change the outcome of the elections.

“The best thing we could do for Joe is to get him a Democratic Senate,” former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang wrote on Twitter. “There should be coordination of resources. Everyone who campaigned for Joe should get ready to head to Georgia. I’ll go. It’s the only way to sideline Mitch and give Joe a unified government,” he wrote, referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden.

“There isn’t much time,” Yang added. “The earliest date for absentee ballots to be mailed for the runoff is Nov. 18. The registration deadline is Dec. 7. The In-person early voting begins Dec. 14.”

With Republican Dan Sullivan winning the Senate race Alaska on Wednesday, the GOP now hold an edge in the Senate 50-48.

The other two seats are both in Georgia. Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue holds just below 50% of the vote in the state over Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff. In the state, winners must top 50% or the race goes into a runoff, set for Jan. 5. Also that day, a special election between Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler and Democrat Raphael Warnock for the state’s other Senate seat will be held.

Yang isn’t the only one urging Democrats to move to Georgia. “I hope everyone moves to Georgia in the next month or two, registers to vote, and votes for these two Democratic senators,” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said in a CNN interview this week.

 

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David Barton

1 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton

 

2 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton

barton videos

 

4 Of 5 / The Bible’s Influence In America / American Heritage Series / David Barton

Where things stand in the House

The Democrats majority is shrinking and three dozen races have yet to be called

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s majority has shrunk in House, a shock to Democrats and pollsters who were projecting the California Democrat would expand her caucus after Tuesday’s election.

Democrats were optimistic they could flip roughly 10 seats but their expansion efforts came up short, especially in Texas, and they ended up losing seats in Flordia, Oklahoma, Minnesota and elsewhere.

DEM CAUCUS ERUPTS AS MEMBERS SAY PARTY’S LEFTWARD DRIFT HURT MODERATES IN ELECTION

As of 3 p.m. on Friday, Democrats had won 212 seats compared to Republicans’ 194. Another 29 races have yet to be called. Democrats had a net loss of four seats.

Outstanding races are in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Utah, Arizona, and elsewhere. When all those votes are counted, Republicans are optimistic their numbers could swell to 208 and beyond, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

What’s known is that Republicans have flipped at least seven seats from blue to red and an eighth seat in Michigan that was most recently occupied by a Libertarian. Here’s a snapshot of the GOP victories:

GOP gains in the House

–In Florida, Republican candidate Carlos Gimenez defeated freshman Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in the 26th district. Republican Maria Elvira Salazar defeated freshman Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala in the 27th district.

–In Oklahoma, Republican Stephanie Bice unseated freshman Democratic Rep. Kendra Horn. Horn flipped the seat from red to blue last cycle.

— In South Carolina, freshman congressman Democrat Joe Cunningham was projected to lose his reelection to state GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, flipping South Carolina’s 1st District back to red.

— In Minnesota, Republican Michelle Fischbach ousted longtime Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, toppling the powerful chairman of the House Agriculture Committee in the most pro-Trump district held by a Democrat.

— In New Mexico, Republican Yvette Herrell defeated freshman Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, a freshman Democrat who flipped the 2nd Congressional seat from red to blue in 2018.

— In Iowa’s First Congressional District, Republican state representative and former TV news anchor Ashley Hinson defeated Democratic incumbent Abby Finkenauer.

– In West Michigan, Republican Peter Meijer, an Iraq war veteran whose grandfather started Meijer superstores, defeated Democrat Hillary Scholten, a former Department of Justice and nonprofit lawyer. The Third Congressional District was open after Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, did not seek reelection.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW HOUSE RESULTS

Republicans say more victories are on the horizon

.

Party officials are most optimistic about reclaiming two seats in New York that Democrats flipped in 2018. Votes are still being counted but Republican Nicole Malliotakis has a notable lead over freshman Rep. Max Rose in the Staten Island-Brooklyn district. And former GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney was also ahead in the 22nd District seat she lost two years ago to Rep. Anthony Brindisi.

Democrats have gained two open seats in North Carolina thanks to redrawn congressional maps that favored them and will welcome Deborah Ross and Kathy Manning to their caucus in January.

And Democrats flipped Georgia’s 7th Congressional District held by retiring Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga. Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux beat GOP candidate Rich McCormick in the suburban Atlanta district, the Associated Press called on Friday.

That means Democrats so far have a net loss of four seats in the House.

WHERE THINGS STAND: BATTLE FOR THE SENATE

Democrats think they can hold onto many close races that have not been called and have two other possible pick-up opportunities by defeating Rep. Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey and Rep. Mike Garcia in California.

On a call Thursday afternoon with Democratic House members, Rep. Cheri Bustos, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), expressed frustration with the polling and election forecasts that all pointed to House Democrats expanding their majority.

“I’m furious,” Bustos told her colleagues, according to a source familiar with the call. “Something went wrong here across the entire political world. Our polls, Senate polls, Gov polls, presidential polls, Republican polls, public polls, turnout modeling, and prognosticators all pointed to one political environment – that environment never materialized.”

 
 
 
 

I have written about the tremendous increase in the food stamp program the last 9 years before and that means that both President Obama and Bush were guilty of not trying to slow down it’s growth. Furthermore, Republicans have been some of the biggest supporters of the food stamp program. Milton Friedman had a good solution to help end the welfare state and wish more people would pay attention to it.   Growing government also encourages waste and hurt growth but more importantly it causes people to become dependent on the government as this article and cartoon below show.

My great fear is that the “social capital” of self reliance in America will slowly disappear and that the United States will turn into a European-style welfare state.

That’s the message in the famous “riding in the wagon” cartoons that went viral and became the most-viewed post on this blog.

Well, this Glenn McCoy cartoon has a similar theme.

Obama Voter Cartoon

The only thing I would change is that the rat would become a “pro-government voter” or “left-wing voter” instead of an “Obama voter.” Just like I wasn’t satisfied with an otherwise very good Chuck Asay cartoon showing the struggle between producers and moochers.

That’s for two reasons. First, I’m not partisan. My goal is to spread a message of liberty, not encourage people to vote for or against any candidate.

Second, I’ve been very critical of Obama, but I was also very critical of Bush. Indeed, Bush was a bigger spender than Obama! And Clinton was quite good, so party labels often don’t matter.

But I’m getting wonky. Enjoy the cartoon and feel free to share it widely.

Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth

Uploaded on Aug 17, 2009

This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video analyzes how excessive government spending undermines economic performance. While acknowledging that a very modest level of government spending on things such as “public goods” can facilitate growth, the video outlines eight different ways that that big government hinders prosperity. This video focuses on theory and will be augmented by a second video looking at the empirical evidence favoring smaller government.

Related posts:

If increase in food stamps was just because of recession then why spending go from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007?

If the increase in food stamps was just because of the recession then why did the spending go from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007? The Facts about Food Stamps Everyone Should Hear Rachel Sheffield and T. Elliot Gaiser May 27, 2013 at 12:00 pm (7) Newscom A recent US News & […]

Tell the 48 million food stamps users to eat more broccoli!!!!

Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed             Uploaded on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ We got to slow down the growth of Food Stamps. One […]

Republicans for more food stamps?

Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth __________________ We got to cut spending and we must first start with food stamp program and we need some Senators that are willing to make the tough cuts. Food Stamp Republicans Posted by Chris Edwards Newt Gingrich had fun calling President Obama the “food stamp president,” but […]

Obama promotes food stamps but Milton Friedman had a better suggestion

Milton Friedman’s negative income tax explained by Friedman in 1968: We need to cut back on the Food Stamp program and not try to increase it. What really upsets me is that when the government gets involved in welfare there is a welfare trap created for those who become dependent on the program. Once they […]

400% increase in food stamps since 2000

Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ If welfare increases as much as it has in the […]

Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration

The sad fact is that Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration. A Bumper Crop of Food Stamps Amy Payne May 21, 2013 at 7:01 am Tweet this Where do food stamps come from? They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually […]

Which states are the leaders in food stamp consumption?

I am glad that my state of Arkansas is not the leader in food stamps!!! Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which State Has the Highest Food Stamp Usage of All? March 19, 2013 by Dan Mitchell The food stamp program seems to be a breeding ground of waste, fraud, and abuse. Some of the horror stories […]

Why not cancel the foodstamp program and let the churches step in?

Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ We are becoming a country filled with people that dependent on the federal government when we should be growing our economy by lowering taxes and putting […]

Food Stamp Program is constantly ripped off and should be discontinued

Uploaded by oversightandreform on Mar 6, 2012 Learn More at http://oversight.house.gov The Oversight Committee is examining reports of food stamp merchants previously disqualified who continue to defraud the program. According to a Scripps Howard News Service report, food stamp fraud costs taxpayers hundreds of millions every year. Watch the Oversight hearing live tomorrow at 930 […]

 

11 observations in a dark time By Dennis Prager

11 observations in a dark time

Dennis Prager: Leftists consider it a moral obligation to cheat in order to stop ‘dictator’ Trump

As there is too much to say in the space of one column, I will simply offer some thoughts on the state of the country a week after the 2020 elections.

No. 1: While I am not certain the reported election results are dishonest, I suspect they are. Worse, about half this country believes this, too.

This is unprecedented in American history.

One might counter that this is not unprecedented, that this was precisely what half the American electorate felt in 2000, when many Democrats rejected the 2000 Supreme Court decision regarding Florida’s ballot counting. But that was entirely different. No one alleged widespread Republican fraud in the election of George W. Bush. The issue in that extremely close election involved a faulty voting system that resulted in hand recounts using differing ballot-counting standards from one jurisdiction to the next. Liberal justices joined the 7-2 vote in ruling for Bush that the recounts could not constitutionally go forward.

Therefore, the fact that nearly half the country is far from certain that Joe Biden was honestly elected is unprecedented.

Half this country believes, with good reason, that if Democratic Party officials believe they can get away with cheating, they will do so. Aside from the Democrats having a history of ballot-manipulation, there is an even more compelling reason to believe Democrats would cheat. For four years, they have been telling the nation and telling one another that President Donald Trump is a dictator, a fascist and a white supremacist. Therefore, if a leftist considers himself a moral individual and works in tabulating election results, and he can help prevent the reelection of a white supremacist fascist dictator, wouldn’t he do so? Wouldn’t he be morally obligated to do so?

No. 2: For four years, the mainstream print and electronic media waged daily, indeed hourly, vicious attacks on Trump as a human being. Rarely did they attack his policies, since they were so beneficial to America (some of the greatest economic figures in memory and the lowest black unemployment rate ever recorded) and to the world (a major weakening of Iran and a major strengthening of Israel and Israel-Arab peace). Worse, the media and the Democratic Party immersed the country in a three-year lie about Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

Yet, 70 million Americans still voted for Trump. The Democrats lost seats in the House and will probably not gain control of the Senate, despite the larger number of Republican incumbents who were up for reelection.

Americans watched Democratic governors and mayors do nothing as left-wing thugs burned their cities. And then they watched Democratic mayors and city councils defund their police departments. That is one reason Democrats fared so badly.

No. 3: The mainstream media are now perceived as fraudulent by half of America. This has never been the case. But from The New York Times’ mendacious claim that America’s true founding was in 1619 and was founded in order to preserve slavery – for which the equally dishonest Pulitzer Prize committee awarded the paper a Pulitzer Prize – to the entire mainstream press’s ignoring of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, only left-wing Americans now believe the mainstream media.

No. 4: That is one reason the tech companies shut down conservative voices. The more people hear nonleft ideas, the more they gravitate away from the left. As a result, for the first time in American history, free speech is seriously threatened – not by government, but by private companies. Free speech is the most important freedom of all. If we lose it, it is the end of our country. What may happen then is the division of America, either formally or informally, into two nations, each with its own media and its own schools.

No. 5: Despite four years of being accused of racism and xenophobia, Trump increased both his black and Latino vote. If Trump lost honestly, it was due to his loss of the white male vote – from +31 in 2016 to +23 in 2020.

No. 6: The Democratic Party was once liberal. It is now leftist. And the left, everywhere in the world, suppresses dissent wherever it takes over – from Lenin to the modern American university to Twitter and the rest of Big Tech.

No. 7: Liberals loved America. The left loathes it. Therefore, since the left governs American education, America-hatred dominates the education system from kindergarten to graduate school. You are risking the poisoning of your children’s minds, souls and consciences by sending them to most American schools and nearly all American colleges. Don’t. Home-school, or find a school that teaches rather than indoctrinates.

No. 8: Hydroxychloroquine, one of the safest and oldest medications known to man, when given with zinc to almost anyone as soon as the individual develops symptoms or tests positive with COVID-19, prevents death and even hospitalization in the overwhelming majority of cases. History will likely note that the politicians and scientists who opposed hydroxychloroquine have a lot of blood on their hands.

No. 9: Those who can work from home are far more likely to support lockdowns than those who cannot work from home. As a rule, the former are more likely to be Democrats and more likely to be wealthier than the latter.

No. 10: All over the country, stores in big cities were boarded up solely to protect themselves from left-wing rioters should Trump have won. When Biden was declared the winner, the boards came down. Because everyone knows that conservatives don’t riot.

No. 11: If Biden wins, more and more nonleft Americans will lose their reputations, their businesses and their freedom to speak.

All of which plausibly renders the Georgia runoffs for U.S. senator the most important elections in American history.

Where things stand in the House

The Democrats majority is shrinking and three dozen races have yet to be called

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s majority has shrunk in House, a shock to Democrats and pollsters who were projecting the California Democrat would expand her caucus after Tuesday’s election.

Democrats were optimistic they could flip roughly 10 seats but their expansion efforts came up short, especially in Texas, and they ended up losing seats in Flordia, Oklahoma, Minnesota and elsewhere.

DEM CAUCUS ERUPTS AS MEMBERS SAY PARTY’S LEFTWARD DRIFT HURT MODERATES IN ELECTION

As of 3 p.m. on Friday, Democrats had won 212 seats compared to Republicans’ 194. Another 29 races have yet to be called. Democrats had a net loss of four seats.

Outstanding races are in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Utah, Arizona, and elsewhere. When all those votes are counted, Republicans are optimistic their numbers could swell to 208 and beyond, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

What’s known is that Republicans have flipped at least seven seats from blue to red and an eighth seat in Michigan that was most recently occupied by a Libertarian. Here’s a snapshot of the GOP victories:

GOP gains in the House

–In Florida, Republican candidate Carlos Gimenez defeated freshman Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in the 26th district. Republican Maria Elvira Salazar defeated freshman Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala in the 27th district.

–In Oklahoma, Republican Stephanie Bice unseated freshman Democratic Rep. Kendra Horn. Horn flipped the seat from red to blue last cycle.

— In South Carolina, freshman congressman Democrat Joe Cunningham was projected to lose his reelection to state GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, flipping South Carolina’s 1st District back to red.

— In Minnesota, Republican Michelle Fischbach ousted longtime Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, toppling the powerful chairman of the House Agriculture Committee in the most pro-Trump district held by a Democrat.

— In New Mexico, Republican Yvette Herrell defeated freshman Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, a freshman Democrat who flipped the 2nd Congressional seat from red to blue in 2018.

— In Iowa’s First Congressional District, Republican state representative and former TV news anchor Ashley Hinson defeated Democratic incumbent Abby Finkenauer.

– In West Michigan, Republican Peter Meijer, an Iraq war veteran whose grandfather started Meijer superstores, defeated Democrat Hillary Scholten, a former Department of Justice and nonprofit lawyer. The Third Congressional District was open after Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, did not seek reelection.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW HOUSE RESULTS

Republicans say more victories are on the horizon

.

Party officials are most optimistic about reclaiming two seats in New York that Democrats flipped in 2018. Votes are still being counted but Republican Nicole Malliotakis has a notable lead over freshman Rep. Max Rose in the Staten Island-Brooklyn district. And former GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney was also ahead in the 22nd District seat she lost two years ago to Rep. Anthony Brindisi.

Democrats have gained two open seats in North Carolina thanks to redrawn congressional maps that favored them and will welcome Deborah Ross and Kathy Manning to their caucus in January.

And Democrats flipped Georgia’s 7th Congressional District held by retiring Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga. Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux beat GOP candidate Rich McCormick in the suburban Atlanta district, the Associated Press called on Friday.

That means Democrats so far have a net loss of four seats in the House.

WHERE THINGS STAND: BATTLE FOR THE SENATE

Democrats think they can hold onto many close races that have not been called and have two other possible pick-up opportunities by defeating Rep. Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey and Rep. Mike Garcia in California.

On a call Thursday afternoon with Democratic House members, Rep. Cheri Bustos, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), expressed frustration with the polling and election forecasts that all pointed to House Democrats expanding their majority.

“I’m furious,” Bustos told her colleagues, according to a source familiar with the call. “Something went wrong here across the entire political world. Our polls, Senate polls, Gov polls, presidential polls, Republican polls, public polls, turnout modeling, and prognosticators all pointed to one political environment – that environment never materialized.”

I have written about the tremendous increase in the food stamp program the last 9 years before and that means that both President Obama and Bush were guilty of not trying to slow down it’s growth. Furthermore, Republicans have been some of the biggest supporters of the food stamp program. Milton Friedman had a good solution to help end the welfare state and wish more people would pay attention to it.   Growing government also encourages waste and hurt growth but more importantly it causes people to become dependent on the government as this article and cartoon below show.

My great fear is that the “social capital” of self reliance in America will slowly disappear and that the United States will turn into a European-style welfare state.

That’s the message in the famous “riding in the wagon” cartoons that went viral and became the most-viewed post on this blog.

Well, this Glenn McCoy cartoon has a similar theme.

Obama Voter Cartoon

The only thing I would change is that the rat would become a “pro-government voter” or “left-wing voter” instead of an “Obama voter.” Just like I wasn’t satisfied with an otherwise very good Chuck Asay cartoon showing the struggle between producers and moochers.

That’s for two reasons. First, I’m not partisan. My goal is to spread a message of liberty, not encourage people to vote for or against any candidate.

Second, I’ve been very critical of Obama, but I was also very critical of Bush. Indeed, Bush was a bigger spender than Obama! And Clinton was quite good, so party labels often don’t matter.

But I’m getting wonky. Enjoy the cartoon and feel free to share it widely.

Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth

Uploaded on Aug 17, 2009

This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video analyzes how excessive government spending undermines economic performance. While acknowledging that a very modest level of government spending on things such as “public goods” can facilitate growth, the video outlines eight different ways that that big government hinders prosperity. This video focuses on theory and will be augmented by a second video looking at the empirical evidence favoring smaller government.

Related posts:

If increase in food stamps was just because of recession then why spending go from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007?

If the increase in food stamps was just because of the recession then why did the spending go from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007? The Facts about Food Stamps Everyone Should Hear Rachel Sheffield and T. Elliot Gaiser May 27, 2013 at 12:00 pm (7) Newscom A recent US News & […]

Tell the 48 million food stamps users to eat more broccoli!!!!

Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed             Uploaded on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ We got to slow down the growth of Food Stamps. One […]

Republicans for more food stamps?

Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth __________________ We got to cut spending and we must first start with food stamp program and we need some Senators that are willing to make the tough cuts. Food Stamp Republicans Posted by Chris Edwards Newt Gingrich had fun calling President Obama the “food stamp president,” but […]

Obama promotes food stamps but Milton Friedman had a better suggestion

Milton Friedman’s negative income tax explained by Friedman in 1968: We need to cut back on the Food Stamp program and not try to increase it. What really upsets me is that when the government gets involved in welfare there is a welfare trap created for those who become dependent on the program. Once they […]

400% increase in food stamps since 2000

Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ If welfare increases as much as it has in the […]

Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration

The sad fact is that Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration. A Bumper Crop of Food Stamps Amy Payne May 21, 2013 at 7:01 am Tweet this Where do food stamps come from? They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually […]

Which states are the leaders in food stamp consumption?

I am glad that my state of Arkansas is not the leader in food stamps!!! Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which State Has the Highest Food Stamp Usage of All? March 19, 2013 by Dan Mitchell The food stamp program seems to be a breeding ground of waste, fraud, and abuse. Some of the horror stories […]

Why not cancel the foodstamp program and let the churches step in?

Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ We are becoming a country filled with people that dependent on the federal government when we should be growing our economy by lowering taxes and putting […]

Food Stamp Program is constantly ripped off and should be discontinued

Uploaded by oversightandreform on Mar 6, 2012 Learn More at http://oversight.house.gov The Oversight Committee is examining reports of food stamp merchants previously disqualified who continue to defraud the program. According to a Scripps Howard News Service report, food stamp fraud costs taxpayers hundreds of millions every year. Watch the Oversight hearing live tomorrow at 930 […]

 

Dan Mitchell OF CENTER FOR FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY article Biden’s Policy to Increase the Tax Burden on Investment, Wages, and Job Creation

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Biden’s Policy to Increase the Tax Burden on Investment, Wages, and Job Creation

Every single economic school of thought agrees with the proposition that investment is a key factor in driving wages and growth.

Even foolish concepts such as socialism and Marxism acknowledge this relationship, though they want the government to be in charge of deciding where to invest and how much to invest (an approach that has a miserable track record).

Another widely shared proposition is that higher tax rates will discourage whatever is being taxed. Even politicians understand this notion, for instance, when arguing for higher taxes on tobacco.

To be sure, economists will argue about the magnitude of the response (will a higher tax rate cause a big effect, medium effect, or a small effect?).

But they’ll all agree that a higher tax on something will lead to less of that thing.

Which is why I always argue that we need the lowest-possible tax rates on the activities – work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship – that create wealth and prosperity.

That’s why it’s so disappointing that Joe Biden, as part of his platform in the presidential race, has embraced class-warfare taxation.

And it’s even more disappointing that he specifically supports policies that will impose a much higher tax burden on capital formation.

How much higher? Kyle Pomerleau of the American Enterprise Institute churned through Biden’s proposals to see what it would mean for tax rates on investment and business activity.

Former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has proposed several tax increases that focus on raising taxes on business and capital income. Taxing business and capital income can affect saving and investment decisions by reducing the return to these activities and distorting the allocation across different assets,forms of financing, and business forms. Under current law, the weighted average marginal effective tax rate (METR) on business assets is 19.6 percent… Biden’s tax proposals would raise the METR on business investment in the United States by 7.8 percentage points to 27.5 percent in 2021. The effective tax rate would rise on most assets and new investment in all industries. In addition to increasing the overall tax burden on business investment, Biden’s proposals would increase the bias in favor of debt-financed and noncorporate investment over equity-financed and corporate investment.

Here’s the most illuminating visual from Kyle’s report.

The first row of data shows that the effective tax rate just by almost 8 percentage points.

I also think it’s important to focus on the last two rows. Notice that the tax burden on equity increases by a lot while the tax burden on debt actually drops slightly.

This is very foolish since almost all economists will acknowledge that it’s a bad idea to create more risk for an economy by imposing a preference for debt (indeed, mitigating this bias was one of the best features of the 2017 tax reform).

—-

“Medicare for All” Would Copy the Bad Features of the U.K.’s Government-Run System

The so-called Green New Deal is only tangentially related to climate issues.

It’s best to think of it as the left’s wish list,and it includes a paid leave entitlement, government jobs, infrastructure boondoggles, and an expansion of the already bankrupt Social Security system.

But the most expensive item on the list is “Medicare for All,” which is a scheme concocted by Bernie Sanders to have the government pay for everything.

Would this be a good idea? In a column for Forbes, Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute explains that government-run healthcare in the United Kingdom has some very unfriendly features.

Nearly a quarter of a million British patients have been waiting more than six months to receive planned medical treatment from the National Health Service, according to a recent report from the Royal College of Surgeons. More than 36,000 have been in treatment queues for nine months or more. …Consider how long it takes to get care at the emergency room in Britain. Government data show that hospitals in England only saw 84.2% of patients within four hours in February. …Wait times for cancer treatment — where timeliness can be a matter of life and death — are also far too lengthy. According to January NHS England data, almost 25% of cancer patients didn’t start treatment on time despite an urgent referral by their primary care doctor. …And keep in mind that “on time” for the NHS is already 62 days after referral.

If this sounds like the VA health care system, you’re right.

Both are government run. Both make people wait.

And both produce bad outcomes. Here’s some of the data from the British system.

Unsurprisingly, British cancer patients fare worse than those in the United States. Only 81% of breast cancer patients in the United Kingdom live at least five years after diagnosis, compared to 89% in the United States. Just 83% of patients in the United Kingdom live five years after a prostate cancer diagnosis, versus 97% here in America.

Just like I told Simon Hobbs on CNBC many years ago.

The best part of Sally’s column is that she explains how the flaws in the U.K. system are being copied by Bernie Sanders and other supporters.

Great Britain’s health crisis is the inevitable outcome of a system where government edicts, not supply and demand, determine where scarce resources are allocated. Yet some lawmakers are gunning to implement precisely such a system in the United States. The bulk of the Democratic Party’s field of presidential candidates — including Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren — co-sponsored Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2017 “Medicare for All” bill. That plan would abolish private insurance and put all Americans on a single government-run plan… Britons face long waits for poor care under their country’s single-payer system. That’s not the sort of healthcare model the American people are looking for.

The bottom line is that Medicare for All would further exacerbate the third-party payer problem that already plagues the health care system.

And that means ever-escalating demand, rising costs, and inefficiencies.

There are only two ways of dealing with the cost spiral. One option is huge tax increases, which would result in a massive, European-style tax burden on the lower-income and middle-class taxpayers.

Taxpayers in the U.K. endure higher burdens than their counterparts in America, But they also suffer from the second option for dealing with the cost spiral, which is rationing.

Some of the data was in Ms. Pipes’ column.

If you want more examples (and some horrifying examples), you can click stories from 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012.

Milton Friedman On Charlie Rose (Part One)

The late Milton Friedman discusses economics and otherwise with Charlie Rose.

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Milton Friedman: Life and ideas – Part 01

Milton Friedman: Life and ideas

A brief biography of Milton Friedman

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Stossel – “Free to Choose” (Milton Friedman) 1/6

6-10-10. pt.1 of 6. Stossel discusses Milton Friedman’s 1980 book, “Free to Choose”, which was smuggled in and read widely in Eastern Europe during the Cold War by many countries under Soviet rule. Read and admired the world over by the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, this book served as the inspiration for many of the Soviet sattellite countries’ economies once they achieved freedom after the fall of the Soviet Union.

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Milton Friedman on Medical Care [1/6]

Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan  were two of my heroes and I know that you can learn a great deal from their lives and their economic philosophies.  I suggest checking out these episodes of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?”  and “Created Equal”  and  From Cradle to Grave, and – Power of the Market.

What’s the Half-Life of a “Temporary” Tax Increase?

July 1, 2013 by Dan Mitchell

Milton Friedman famously noted that, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program”and Ronald Reagan sagely observed that “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”

Two great Americans

They’re both right, but they should have included the other half of the fiscal equation. Repealing a tax, even a “temporary tax,” is just as difficult as getting rid of wasteful spending.

Simply stated, once politicians get access to a source of additional revenue, it’s feeding time at the zoo and good luck getting them to give the money back. Here’s a sobering example from Philadelphia.

Skeptics say there’s no such thing as a “temporary” tax. Like the two-year property tax increase City Council passed in 2010 that, lo and behold, is still with us. Or another dreaded levy: the wage tax. It was passed in 1939 as a short-term fix for the city’s finances, but succeeding generations have nonetheless been forced to accept its bite in their paychecks. The latest tax under consideration for immortality is the 1 percent sales-tax increase the state allowed Philadelphia to impose in 2009 as a bridge through the recession.The increase – which raised the tax on most goods and services in Philadelphia from 7 percent to 8 percent – is slated to expire next June. City and state leaders are now talking about making the increase permanent, with the extra money being put toward one or both of the city’s greatest needs: the struggling School District and the vastly underfunded public employee pension fund.

The bulk of that excerpt is a straightforward recitation of how temporary tax hikes become permanent tax hikes, but I have to object to the final sentence. The “city’s greatest needs” are replacing the failed government education monopoly with school choice and reducing the excessive pensions for over-compensated government bureaucrats – such as the city’s former “managing director” (whatever that is), Camille Cates Barnett.

I also can’t resist commenting on the craven behavior of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. I though the national Chamber of Commerce was bad when it endorsed TARP and the faux stimulus, but the local Chamber may be even worse.

Joe Grace, director of public policy at the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, said, “We have not seen any evidence that extending the 1 percent is going to have any negative impact on the local businesses.” The chamber is also backing a $2-a-pack cigarette tax dedicated to the schools. “Our belief is the School District needs resources,” Grace said. “We’re working, along with many others, to close the school-funding gap, really by any means necessary.”

So Mr. Grace thinks more funding for a failed education bureaucracy should be achieved by “any means necessary.” Well, I think a 100 percent tax rate on Mr. Grace should be at the top of the list.

Heck, if France can tax at 100 percent, then so can the City of Philadelphia, and Mr. Grace is a deserving recipient of such a levy.

But there are some opponents of the tax, though they’re not exactly libertarian heroes.

…members of the nearly all-Democratic Philadelphia delegation have raised concerns about using the 1 percent to help fund the schools because it lets the state off the hook for its share of education funding. Danilo Burgos, president of the Dominican Grocers Association, argued that giving sales-tax revenue to the schools was “a Band-Aid.” The state, which has control of the city’s schools, should be responsible for devising “a real solution for our schools.”

In other words, they want more money to waste, but they want to take it from people in the rest of the state.

Sort of reminds me of what the great Frederic Bastiat wrote more than 150 years ago, “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”

But if enough people act as if that fiction is reality, then you get too many people riding in the wagon and not enough people pulling the wagon. That’s a good description of what’s happening in places such as Philadelphia and Greece.

Related posts:Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” film transcripts and videos here on http://www.thedailyhatch.org

I have many posts on my blog that include both the transcript and videos of Milton Friedman’s film series “Free to Choose” and here are the episodes that I have posted.

_____________

Here are the posts and you can find the links in order below this.

The Power of the Market from 1990

The Failure of Socialism from 1990

The Anatomy of a Crisis from 1980

What is wrong with our schools?  from 1980

Created Equal from 1980

From Cradle to Grave from 1980

The Power of the Market 1980

Debate on Inflation from 1980

Milton Friedman is the short one!!!

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 5)

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 5-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 4)

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 4-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 3)

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 3-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 2)

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1

“Friedman Friday” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 5)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]

“Friedman Friday” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 4)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]

“Friedman Friday” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 3)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]

“Friedman Friday” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 2)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]

“Friedman Friday,” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 7of 7)

TEMIN: We don’t think the big capital arose before the government did? VON HOFFMAN: Listen, what are we doing here? I mean __ defending big government is like defending death and taxes. When was the last time you met anybody that was in favor of big government? FRIEDMAN: Today, today I met Bob Lekachman, I […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 6of 7)

worked pretty well for a whole generation. Now anything that works well for a whole generation isn’t entirely bad. From the fact __ from that fact, and the undeniable fact that things are working poorly now, are we to conclude that the Keynesian sort of mixed regulation was wrong __ FRIEDMAN: Yes. LEKACHMAN: __ or […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 5 of 7)

MCKENZIE: Ah, well, that’s not on our agenda actually. (Laughter) VOICE OFF SCREEN: Why not? MCKENZIE: I boldly repeat the question, though, the expectation having been __ having been raised in the public mind, can you reverse this process where government is expected to produce the happy result? LEKACHMAN: Oh, no way. And it would […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 4 of 7)

The massive growth of central government that started after the depression has continued ever since. If anything, it has even speeded up in recent years. Each year there are more buildings in Washington occupied by more bureaucrats administering more laws. The Great Depression persuaded the public that private enterprise was a fundamentally unstable system. That […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 3 of 7)

Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside is the largest horde of gold in the world. Because the world was on a gold standard in 1929, these vaults, where the U.S. gold was stored, […]

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“Friedman Friday” (Part 16) (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 2 of 7)

  George Eccles: Well, then we called all our employees together. And we told them to be at the bank at their place at 8:00 a.m. and just act as if nothing was happening, just have a smile on their face, if they could, and me too. And we have four savings windows and we […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1of 7)

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1 FREE TO CHOOSE: Anatomy of Crisis Friedman Delancy Street in New York’s lower east side, hardly one of the city’s best known sites, yet what happened in this street nearly 50 years ago continues to effect all of us today. […]

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Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 6 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 6 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: FRIEDMAN: But I personally think it’s a good thing. But I don’t see that any reason whatsoever why I shouldn’t have been required […]

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Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 5 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 5 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Are your voucher schools  going to accept these tough children? COONS: You bet they are. (Several talking at once.) COONS: May I answer […]

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Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 4 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 4 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: It seems to me that if one is truly interested in liberty, which I think is the ultimate value that Milton Friedman talks […]

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Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 3 of transcript and video)

Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 3 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: If it […]

Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 2 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 2 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Groups of concerned parents and teachers decided to do something about it. They used private funds to take over empty stores and they […]

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Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 1 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 1 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Friedman: These youngsters are beginning another day at one of America’s public schools, Hyde Park High School in Boston. What happens when […]

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Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 7 of transcript and video)

Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series. Created Equal [7/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose […]

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 6 of transcript and video)

Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series. Created Equal [6/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose […]

“Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 5 of transcript and video)

Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series. Created Equal [5/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose […]

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 4 of transcript and video)

Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series. Created Equal [4/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose […]

Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 3 of transcript and video)

Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other […]

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 2 of transcript and video)

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 2 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are […]

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 1 of transcript and video)

 Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan Liberals like President Obama (and John Brummett) want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series. […]

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5

Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 7 of 7)

I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. TEMIN: We don’t think the big capital arose before the government did? VON HOFFMAN: Listen, what are we doing here? I mean __ defending big government is like defending death and taxes. […]

Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 6 of 7)

I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen worked pretty well for a whole generation. Now anything that works well for a whole generation isn’t entirely bad. From the fact __ from that fact, and the undeniable fact that things […]

Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 5 of 7)

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 5 of 7 MCKENZIE: Ah, well, that’s not on our agenda actually. (Laughter) VOICE OFF SCREEN: Why not? MCKENZIE: I boldly repeat the question, though, the expectation having been __ having […]

Milton Friedman Friday: (“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 4 of 7)

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 4 of 7 The massive growth of central government that started after the depression has continued ever since. If anything, it has even speeded up in recent years. Each year there […]

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Milton Friedman Friday: (“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 3 of 7)

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 3 OF 7 Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside […]

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Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 2 of 7)

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. For the past 7 years Maureen Ramsey has had to buy food and clothes for her family out of a government handout. For the whole of that time, her husband, Steve, hasn’t […]

Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7)

Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7) Volume 4 – From Cradle to Grave Abstract: Since the Depression years of the 1930s, there has been almost continuous expansion of governmental efforts to provide for people’s welfare. First, there was a tremendous expansion of public works. The Social Security Act […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 7 of 7)

  Michael Harrington:  If you don’t have the expertise, the knowledge technology today, you’re out of the debate. And I think that we have to democratize information and government as well as the economy and society. FRIEDMAN: I am sorry to say Michael Harrington’s solution is not a solution to it. He wants minority rule, I […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 6 of 7)

PETERSON: Well, let me ask you how you would cope with this problem, Dr. Friedman. The people decided that they wanted cool air, and there was tremendous need, and so we built a huge industry, the air conditioning industry, hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous earnings opportunities and nearly all of us now have air […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 5 of 7)

Part 5 Milton Friedman: I do not believe it’s proper to put the situation in terms of industrialist versus government. On the contrary, one of the reasons why I am in favor of less government is because when you have more government industrialists take it over, and the two together form a coalition against the ordinary […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 4 of 7)

The fundamental principal of the free society is voluntary cooperation. The economic market, buying and selling, is one example. But it’s only one example. Voluntary cooperation is far broader than that. To take an example that at first sight seems about as far away as you can get __ the language we speak; the words […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 3 of 7)

  _________________________   Pt3  Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 2 of 7)

  Aside from its harbor, the only other important resource of Hong Kong is people __ over 4_ million of them. Like America a century ago, Hong Kong in the past few decades has been a haven for people who sought the freedom to make the most of their own abilities. Many of them are […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 1of 7)

“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]

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Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5

Debate on Milton Friedman’s cure for inflation

If you would like to see the first three episodes on inflation in Milton Friedman’s film series “Free to Choose” then go to a previous post I did. Ep. 9 – How to Cure Inflation [4/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980) Uploaded by investbligurucom on Jun 16, 2010 While many people have a fairly […]

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“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman believed in liberty (Interview by Charlie Rose of Milton Friedman part 1)

Charlie Rose interview of Milton Friedman My favorite economist: Milton Friedman : A Great Champion of Liberty  by V. Sundaram   Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three US Presidents – Nixon, Ford and Reagan – died last Thursday (16 November, 2006 ) in San Francisco […]

What were the main proposals of Milton Friedman?

Stearns Speaks on House Floor in Support of Balanced Budget Amendment Uploaded by RepCliffStearns on Nov 18, 2011 Speaking on House floor in support of Balanced Budget Resolution, 11/18/2011 ___________ Below are some of the main proposals of Milton Friedman. I highly respected his work. David J. Theroux said this about Milton Friedman’s view concerning […]

“Friedman Friday,” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]

Defending Milton Friedman

What a great defense of Milton Friedman!!!!   Defaming Milton Friedman by Johan Norberg This article appeared in Reason Online on September 26, 2008  PRINT PAGE  CITE THIS      Sans Serif      Serif Share with your friends: ShareThis In the future, if you tell a student or a journalist that you favor free markets and limited government, there is […]

Milton and Rose Friedman “Two Lucky People”

Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 2 of 2 Uploaded by PenguinProseMedia on Oct 26, 2011 2nd half of 1994 interview. ________________ I have a lot of respect for the Friedmans.Two Lucky People by Milton and Rose Friedman reviewed by David Frum — October 1998. However, I liked this review below better. It […]

Video clip:Milton Friedman discusses his view of numerous political figures and policy issues in (Part 2)

Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 1 of 2 Uploaded by PenguinProseMedia on Oct 25, 2011 Says Federal Reserve should be abolished, criticizes Keynes. One of Friedman’s best interviews, discussion spans Friedman’s career and his view of numerous political figures and public policy issues. ___________________ Here is a review of “Two Lucky People.” […]

Milton Friedman believed in liberty (Interview by Charlie Rose of Milton Friedman part 1)

Charlie Rose interview of Milton Friedman My favorite economist: Milton Friedman : A Great Champion of Liberty  by V. Sundaram   Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three US Presidents – Nixon, Ford and Reagan – died last Thursday (16 November, 2006 ) in San Francisco […]

“The Failure of Socialism” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]

Volume 1: Power of the Market Volume 2: The Tyranny of Control
Volume 3: Anatomy of a Crisis 
Volume 4: From Cradle to Grave
Volume 5: Created Equal
Volume 6: What’s Wrong With Our Schools?
Volume 7: Who Protects the Consumer?
Volume 8: Who Protects the Worker?
Volume 9: How to Cure Inflation
Volume 10: How to Stay Free

Updated 1990 Series:
Volume 1: The Power of the Market
Volume 2: The Tyranny of Control
Volume 3: Freedom & Prosperity
Volume 4: The Failure of Socialism
Volume 5: Created Equal

 

“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman – Power of Choice (Biography) Part 3

Milton Friedman – Power of Choice (Biography) Part 3 Published on May 21, 2012 by BasicEconomics Tribute to Milton Friedman English Pages, 8. 9. 2008 Dear colleagues, dear friends, (1) It is a great honor for me to be asked to say a few words to this distinguished and very knowledgeable audience about one of our greatest […]

“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman – Power of Choice (Biography) Part 2

Milton Friedman – Power of Choice (Biography) Part 2 Published on May 21, 2012 by BasicEconomics My Tribute to Milton Friedman: The Little Giant of Free Market Economics By: admin- 11/17/2006 09:49 AM RESIZE: AAA  Milton Friedman, the intellectual architect of the free-market reforms of the post-World War II era, was a dear friend. I […]

“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman – Power of Choice – Biography (Part 1)

Milton Friedman – Power of Choice – Biography (Part 1) Published on May 20, 2012 by BasicEconomics   David R. Henderson The Pursuit of Happiness ~ Milton Friedman: A Personal Tribute May 2007 • Volume: 57 • Issue: 4 David Henderson (davidrhenderson1950@gmail.com) is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution and an economics professor at […]

Milton Friedman’s Chicago Boys started the Chilean Miracle and it is still helping ordinary people today!!!

Milton Friedman and Chile – The Power of Choice Uploaded on May 13, 2011 In this excerpt from Free To Choose Network’s “The Power of Choice (2006)”, we set the record straight on Milton Friedman’s dealings with Chile — including training the Chicago Boys and his meeting with Augusto Pinochet. Was the tremendous prosperity unleashed […]

Margaret Thatcher admired Milton Friedman

RARE Friedman Footage – On Keys to Reagan and Thatcher’s Success Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman were two of my heroes. Thatcher praises Friedman, her freedom fighter By George Jones, Political Editor 12:01AM GMT 17 Nov 2006 A tireless champion of the free market Let’s not get misty eyed over the Friedman legacy Milton Friedman, […]

Milton Friedman and Chile an update

Milton Friedman was a great economist and a fine speaker. ___________________ I have written before about Milton Friedman’s influence on the economy of Chile. Now I saw this fine article below fromhttp://www.heritage.org  and below that article I have included an article from the Wall Street Journal that talks about Milton Friedman’s influence on Chile. I […]

“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman explains negative income tax to William F. Buckley in 1968

December 06, 2011 03:54 PM Milton Friedman Explains The Negative Income Tax – 1968 0 comments By Gordonskene enlarge Milton Friedman and friends.DOWNLOADS: 36 PLAYS: 35 Embed   The age-old question of Taxes. In the early 1960′s Economist Milton Friedman adopted an idea hatched in England in the 1950′s regarding a Negative Income Tax, to […]

Milton Friedman admired Margaret Thatcher

RARE Friedman Footage – On Keys to Reagan and Thatcher’s Success Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman were two of my heroes. Milton Friedman on How Francois Mitterrand (and Failed Lefty Economics) Helped Re-elect Margaret Thatcher Matt Welch|Apr. 10, 2013 9:37 am Yesterday I wrote a column about how Margaret Thatcher liberated Western Europe from the […]

Milton Friedman had a solution to today’s welfare mentality!!!

  I have written about the tremendous increase in the food stamp program the last 9 years before and that means that both President Obama and Bush were guilty of not trying to slow down it’s growth. Furthermore, Republicans have been some of the biggest supporters of the food stamp program. Milton Friedman had a […]

“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman on “Firing Line” in 1968

Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan And William F. Buckley Jr. Peter Robinson, 12.12.08, 12:01 AM EST In a time of crisis, don’t forget what they had to say. As the federal deficit surpasses $1 trillion, Congress debates a bailout for the Detroit automakers and President-elect Barack Obama draws up plans for a vast new stimulus package, […]

Joe Biden: Worse than Barack Obama, Worse than Hillary Clinton By Daniel Mitchell OF CENTER FOR FREEDOM AND PROSPERITY

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Joe Biden: Worse than Barack Obama, Worse than Hillary Clinton

Given their overt statism, I’ve mostly focused on the misguided policies being advocated by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

But that doesn’t mean Joe Biden’s platform is reasonable or moderate.

Ezra Klein of Vox unabashedly states that the former Vice President’s policies are “far to Obama’s left.”

This is an issue where folks on both ends of the spectrum agree.

In a column for the right-leaning American Spectator, George Neumayr also says Biden is not a moderate.

Biden likes to feed the mythology that he is still a moderate. …This is, after all, a pol who giddily whispered in Barack Obama’s ear that a massive government takeover of health care “was a big f—ing deal,”…and now pronouncing Obamacare only a baby step toward a more progressive future. It can’t be repeated enough that “Climate Change” Joe doesn’t give a damn about the ruinous consequences of extreme environmentalism for Rust Belt industries. His Climate Change plans read like something Al Gore might have scribbled to him in a note. …On issue after issue, Biden is taking hardline liberal stances. …“I have the most progressive record of anybody running.” …He is far more comfortable on the Ellen show than on the streets of Scranton. He has given up Amtrak for private jets, and, like his lobbyist brother and grifter son, has cashed in on his last name.

If you want policy details, the Wall Street Journal opined on his fiscal plan.

Mr. Biden has previously promised to spend $1.7 trillion over 10 years on a Green New Deal, $750 billion on health care, and $750 billion on higher education. To pay for it all, he’s set out $3.4 trillion in tax increases. This is more aggressive, for the record, than Hillary Clinton’s proposed tax increases in 2016, which totaled $1.4 trillion, per an analysis at the time from the left-of-center Tax Policy Center. In 2008 Barack Obama pledged to raise taxes on the rich while cutting them on net by $2.9 trillion. Twice as many tax increases as the last presidential nominee: That’s now the “moderate” Democratic position. …raising the top rate for residents of all states. …a huge increase on today’s top capital-gains rate of 23.8%… This would put rates on long-term capital gains at their highest since the 1970s. …Raise the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%. This would…vault the U.S. corporate rate back to near the top in the developed world. …the bottom line is big tax increases on people, capital and businesses. There’s nothing pro-growth in the mix.

And the ever-rigorous Peter Suderman of Reason wrote about Biden’s statist agenda.

Biden released a proposal to raise a slew of new taxes, mostly on corporations and high earners. He would increase tax rates on capital gains, increase the tax rate for households earning more than $510,000 annually, double the minimum tax rate for multinational corporations,impose a minimum tax on large companies whose tax filings don’t show them paying a certain percentage of their earnings, and undo many of the tax cuts included in the 2017 tax law. …as The New York Times reports, Biden’s proposed tax hikes are more than double what Hillary Clinton called for during the 2016 campaign. …Hillary Clinton…pushed the party gently to the left. Four years later, before the campaign is even over, the party’s supposed moderates are proposing double or even quadruple the new taxes she proposed.

The former Veep isn’t just a fan of higher taxes and more spending.

He also likes nanny-state policies.

Joe Biden says he is 100% in favor of banning plastic bags in the U.S. …let’s take a quick walk through the facts about single-use plastic bags at the retail level. …the plastic bags typically handed out by retailers make up only 0.6% of visible litter. Or put another way, for every 1,000 pieces of litter, only six are plastic bags. …They make up less than 1% of landfills by weight… 90% of the plastic bags found at sea streamed in from eight rivers in Asia and two in Africa. Only about 1% of all plastic in the ocean is from America. …Thicker plastic bags have to be used at least 11 times before they yield any environmental benefits. This is much longer than their typical lifespans. …Though it might seem almost innocuous, Biden’s support for a bag ban is symptom of a greater sickness in the Democratic Party. It craves unfettered political power.

Let’s not forget, by the way, that Biden (like most politicians in Washington) is corrupt.

Here are some excerpts from a Peter Schweizer column in the New York Post.

Political figures have long used their families to route power and benefits for their own self-enrichment. …one particular politician — Joe Biden — emerges as the king of the sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from his largesse, favorable access and powerful position for commercial gain. …Joe Biden’s younger brother, James, has been an integral part of the family political machine…HillStone announced that James Biden would be joining the firm as an executive vice president. James appeared to have little or no background in housing construction, but…the firm was starting negotiations to win a massive contract in war-torn Iraq. Six months later, the firm announced a contract to build 100,000 homes. …A group of minority partners, including James Biden, stood to split about $735 million. …With the election of his father as vice president, Hunter Biden launched businesses fused to his father’s power that led him to lucrative deals with a rogue’s gallery of governments and oligarchs around the world. …Hunter’s involvement with an entity called Burnham Financial Group…Burnham became the center of a federal investigation involving a $60 million fraud scheme against one of the poorest Indian tribes in America, the Oglala Sioux. …the firm relied on his father’s name and political status as a means of both recruiting pension money into the scheme.

I only excerpted sections about Biden’s brother and son. You should read the entire article.

And even the left-leaning U.K.-based Guardian has the same perspective on Biden’s oleaginous behavior.

Biden has a big corruption problem and it makes him a weak candidate. …I can already hear the howls: But look at Trump! Trump is 1,000 times worse! You don’t need to convince me. …But here’s the thing: nominating a candidate like Biden will make it far more difficult to defeat Trump. It will allow Trump to muddy the water, to once again pretend he is the one “draining the swamp”, running against Washington culture. …With Biden, we are basically handing Trump a whataboutism playbook. …his record represents the transactional, grossly corrupt culture in Washington that long precedes Trump.

I’ll close by simply sharing some objective data about Biden’s voting behavior when he was a Senator.

According to the National Taxpayers Union, he finished his time on Capitol Hill with eleven-consecutive “F” scores (hey, at least he was consistent!).

And he also was the only Senator who got a lifetime rating of zero from the Club for Growth.

Though if you want to be generous, his lifetime rating was actually 0.025 percent.

Regardless, that was still worse than Barack Obama, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.

So if Biden become President, it’s safe to assume that America will accelerate on the already-baked-in-the-cake road to Greece.

P.S. Of course, we’ll be on that path even if Biden doesn’t become President, so perhaps the moral of the story is to buy land in Australia.

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Interpreting the Election Results

For what it’s worth, my presidential prediction for 2020 will probably turn out to be more accurate than my presidential prediction for 2016.

But I doubt anyone cares about that. Let’s instead look at what happened last night (and, in some cases, what is still happening).

President

It appears that Biden will prevail in the battle for the White House when the dust settles, but you can see from this Washington Post map that the race was much closer than most people expected (Pennsylvania is expected to shift to Biden as mail-in votes are counted, and perhaps Georgia as well).

If that’s the final result, here are two obvious takeaways based on where a president has a lot of unilateral power.

Other policy areas generally require agreement between the executive branch and the legislative branch, so we can’t know the impact of a Biden presidency without perusing congressional results.

Senate

In my humble opinion, the big news of the night is that Republicans appear to have retained control of the Senate.

If true, that means some left-wing goals are now very unlikely.

There won’t be any court packing. There won’t be any serious effort to increase the number of Democratic senators by granting statehood to Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.

But let’s focus on the economic issues. Here are some quick takeaways.

House of Representatives

It appears that Republicans will gain seats, which is contrary to all expectations.

That being said, there’s zero possibility of a GOP takeover, so Nancy Pelosi will remain in charge.

Ballot Initiatives

I wrote two weeks ago about this election’s six most important ballot initiatives.

The great news is that taxpayers scored a big victory by defeating the effort to get rid of the flat tax in Illinois an replace it with a so-called progressive tax. Winning that battle probably won’t rescue the Prairie State, but at least it will slow down its march to bankruptcy.

The other five battles mostly were decided correctly – at least based on the latest vote margins.

  • California voters rejected an initiative that would allow the state to engage in racial discrimination.
  • The California initiative to weaken limits on property taxes is trailing.
  • The Colorado initiative to lower the state’s flat tax appears prevailed.
  • The Colorado initiative to strengthen TABOR (the state’s spending cap) is leading.
  • The one clear piece of bad news is that an Arizona initiative to impose a big increase in the top income tax rate appears likely to prevail.

What’s the future for Trump and Trumpism?

Regular readers know I want the GOP to be the Party of Reaganrather than the Party of Trump.

So I will be very interested to see whether Trump’s apparent defeat means Republicans go back to (at least pretending to favor) conventional small-government conservatism.

That will have the be the topic of a future column.

A Silver Lining for Republicans

The party controlling the White House usually loses mid-term elections. For recent examples, Democrats won the House in 2018 and there were big victories for the GOP in 2010 and 2014during the Obama years.

In all likelihood, Republicans will now do much better in the 2022 midterm election with Biden in the White House instead of Trump.

A Silver Lining for Taxpayers

It’s not something that can be quantified, but congressional Republicans will now become much better on spending issues. They’ll no longer face pressure to go along with Trump’s profligacy and they’ll have a partisan incentive to oppose Biden’s profligate agenda.

P.S. Whether you’re happy or sad about the election results, remember that it’s always appropriate to laugh at the clowns and crooks in Washington.

President Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Tom Selleck, Dudley Moore, Lucille Ball at a Tribute to Bob Hope’s 80th birthday at the Kennedy Center. 5/20/83.

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Dan Mitchell is very good at giving speeches and making it very simple to understand economic policy and how it affects a nation. Mitchell also talks about slowing the growth of government and he gives credit to Clinton and Reagan.

Probably my favorite subject that Dan has covered is the Laffer Curve. I got a chance to hear Arthur Laffer speak at Memphis St University in 1981 and Laffer actually predicted what would happen in the next 7 years because of the Reagan Tax Cuts and all of his predictions came true. What did we learn from the Laffer Curve in the 1980′s? Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!! The funny thing is that the world saw what we did and followed along. The drop of the industrialized countries during this same time was 26% (from 68% to 42% on average). It reminded me of Milton Friedman 1980 book “Free to Choose” and his answer to the 11% inflation that President Carter was dealing with in 1980. Reagan put Friedman’s solution into action and 5 years later inflation was under control.

Below is a fine article and video from Dan Mitchell.

(R Row, from front to rear) Milton Friedman, George Shultz, Pres. Ronald Reagan, Arthur Burns, William Simon and Walter Wriston & unknown at a meeting of White House economic advisers.
(R Row, from front to rear) Milton Friedman, George Shultz, Pres. Ronald Reagan, Arthur Burns, William Simon and Walter Wriston & unknown at a meeting of White House economic

I’ve narrated a video that cites Economic Freedom of the World data to explain the five major factors that determine economic performance.

But that video is only six minutes long, so I only skim the surface. For those of you who feel that you’re missing out, you can listen to me pontificate on public policy and growth for more than sixty minutes in this video of a class I taught at the Citadel in South Carolina (and if you’re a glutton for punishment, there’s also nearly an hour of Q&A).

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Daniel J. Mitchell

Published on Apr 2, 2012

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Daniel J. Mitchell speaks to cadets economics and conservatism. This is the 10th lecture in the seminar series titled “The Conservative Intellectual Tradition in America.”

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There are two points that are worth some additional attention.

1. In my discussion of regulation, I mention that health and safety rules can actually cause needless deaths by undermining economic performance. I elaborated on this topic when I waded into the election-season debateabout whether Obama supporters were right to accuse Romney of causing a worker’s premature death.

2. In my discussion of deficits and debt, I criticize the Congressional Budget Office for assuming that government fiscal balance is the key determinant of economic growth. And since CBO assumes you maximize growth by somehow having large surpluses, the bureaucrats actually argue that higher taxes are good for growth and their analysis implies that the growth-maximizing tax rate is 100 percent.

P.S. If you prefer much shorter doses of Dan Mitchell, you can watch my one-minute videos on tax reform that were produced by the Heartland Institute.

Related posts:

Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!!

What did we learn from the Laffer Curve in the 1980′s? Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!! A Lesson on the Laffer Curve for Barack Obama November 6, 2011 by Dan Mitchell One of my frustrating missions […]

Two Lessons from Coolidge: Small government is the best way to achieve competent and effective government and Higher tax rates don’t automatically lead to more tax revenue

Will Rogers has a great quote that I love. He noted, “Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago”(Paula McSpadden Love, The Will Rogers Book, (1972) p. 20.) Dan Mitchell praises Calvin Coolidge for keeping the federal government small. […]

Open letter to President Obama (Part 296) (Laffer curve strikes again!!)

President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. The way […]

Open letter to President Obama (Part 282, How the Laffer Curve worked in the 20th century over and over again!!!)

Dan Mitchell does a great job explaining the Laffer Curve President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a […]

Laffer curve hits tax hikers pretty hard (includes cartoon)

I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism,  Greece,  welfare state or on gun control. Today’s cartoon deals with the Laffer curve. Revenge of the Laffer Curve…Again and Again and Again March 27, 2013 […]

Portugal and the Laffer Curve

Class Warfare just don’t pay it seems. Why can’t we learn from other countries’ mistakes? Class Warfare Tax Policy Causes Portugal to Crash on the Laffer Curve, but Will Obama Learn from this Mistake? December 31, 2012 by Dan Mitchell Back in mid-2010, I wrote that Portugal was going to exacerbate its fiscal problems by raising […]

President Obama ignores warnings about Laffer Curve

The Laffer Curve – Explained Uploaded by Eddie Stannard on Nov 14, 2011 This video explains the relationship between tax rates, taxable income, and tax revenue. The key lesson is that the Laffer Curve is not an all-or-nothing proposition, where we have to choose between the exaggerated claim that “all tax cuts pay for themselves” […]

Harding,Kennedy and Reagan proved that the Laffer Curve works

 I enjoyed this article below because it demonstrates that the Laffer Curve has been working for almost 100 years now when it is put to the test in the USA. I actually got to hear Arthur Laffer speak in person in 1981 and he told us in advance what was going to happen the 1980′s […]

The Laffer Curve Wreaks Havoc in the United Kingdom

I got to hear Arthur Laffer speak back in 1981 and he predicted what would happen in the next few years with the Reagan tax cuts and he was right with every prediction. The Laffer Curve Wreaks Havoc in the United Kingdom July 1, 2012 by Dan Mitchell Back in 2010, I excoriated the new […]

Liberals act like the Laffer Curve does not exist.

Raising taxes will not work. Liberals act like the Laffer Curve does not exist. The Laffer Curve Shows that Tax Increases Are a Very Bad Idea – even if They Generate More Tax Revenue April 10, 2012 by Dan Mitchell The Laffer Curve is a graphical representation of the relationship between tax rates, tax revenue, and […]

 

Daniel Mitchell’s article “Medicare for All” Would Copy the Bad Features of the U.K.’s Government-Run System

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“Medicare for All” Would Copy the Bad Features of the U.K.’s Government-Run System

The so-called Green New Deal is only tangentially related to climate issues.

It’s best to think of it as the left’s wish list,and it includes a paid leave entitlement, government jobs, infrastructure boondoggles, and an expansion of the already bankrupt Social Security system.

But the most expensive item on the list is “Medicare for All,” which is a scheme concocted by Bernie Sanders to have the government pay for everything.

Would this be a good idea? In a column for Forbes, Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute explains that government-run healthcare in the United Kingdom has some very unfriendly features.

Nearly a quarter of a million British patients have been waiting more than six months to receive planned medical treatment from the National Health Service, according to a recent report from the Royal College of Surgeons. More than 36,000 have been in treatment queues for nine months or more. …Consider how long it takes to get care at the emergency room in Britain. Government data show that hospitals in England only saw 84.2% of patients within four hours in February. …Wait times for cancer treatment — where timeliness can be a matter of life and death — are also far too lengthy. According to January NHS England data, almost 25% of cancer patients didn’t start treatment on time despite an urgent referral by their primary care doctor. …And keep in mind that “on time” for the NHS is already 62 days after referral.

If this sounds like the VA health care system, you’re right.

Both are government run. Both make people wait.

And both produce bad outcomes. Here’s some of the data from the British system.

Unsurprisingly, British cancer patients fare worse than those in the United States. Only 81% of breast cancer patients in the United Kingdom live at least five years after diagnosis, compared to 89% in the United States. Just 83% of patients in the United Kingdom live five years after a prostate cancer diagnosis, versus 97% here in America.

Just like I told Simon Hobbs on CNBC many years ago.

The best part of Sally’s column is that she explains how the flaws in the U.K. system are being copied by Bernie Sanders and other supporters.

Great Britain’s health crisis is the inevitable outcome of a system where government edicts, not supply and demand, determine where scarce resources are allocated. Yet some lawmakers are gunning to implement precisely such a system in the United States. The bulk of the Democratic Party’s field of presidential candidates — including Senators Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren — co-sponsored Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2017 “Medicare for All” bill. That plan would abolish private insurance and put all Americans on a single government-run plan… Britons face long waits for poor care under their country’s single-payer system. That’s not the sort of healthcare model the American people are looking for.

The bottom line is that Medicare for All would further exacerbate the third-party payer problem that already plagues the health care system.

And that means ever-escalating demand, rising costs, and inefficiencies.

There are only two ways of dealing with the cost spiral. One option is huge tax increases, which would result in a massive, European-style tax burden on the lower-income and middle-class taxpayers.

Taxpayers in the U.K. endure higher burdens than their counterparts in America, But they also suffer from the second option for dealing with the cost spiral, which is rationing.

Some of the data was in Ms. Pipes’ column.

If you want more examples (and some horrifying examples), you can click stories from 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, and 2012.

Milton Friedman On Charlie Rose (Part One)

The late Milton Friedman discusses economics and otherwise with Charlie Rose.

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Milton Friedman: Life and ideas – Part 01

Milton Friedman: Life and ideas

A brief biography of Milton Friedman

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Stossel – “Free to Choose” (Milton Friedman) 1/6

6-10-10. pt.1 of 6. Stossel discusses Milton Friedman’s 1980 book, “Free to Choose”, which was smuggled in and read widely in Eastern Europe during the Cold War by many countries under Soviet rule. Read and admired the world over by the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, this book served as the inspiration for many of the Soviet sattellite countries’ economies once they achieved freedom after the fall of the Soviet Union.

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Milton Friedman on Medical Care [1/6]

Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan  were two of my heroes and I know that you can learn a great deal from their lives and their economic philosophies.  I suggest checking out these episodes of Milton Friedman’s film series FREE TO CHOOSE: “The Failure of Socialism” and “What is wrong with our schools?”  and “Created Equal”  and  From Cradle to Grave, and – Power of the Market.

What’s the Half-Life of a “Temporary” Tax Increase?

July 1, 2013 by Dan Mitchell

Milton Friedman famously noted that, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program”and Ronald Reagan sagely observed that “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”

Two great Americans

They’re both right, but they should have included the other half of the fiscal equation. Repealing a tax, even a “temporary tax,” is just as difficult as getting rid of wasteful spending.

Simply stated, once politicians get access to a source of additional revenue, it’s feeding time at the zoo and good luck getting them to give the money back. Here’s a sobering example from Philadelphia.

Skeptics say there’s no such thing as a “temporary” tax. Like the two-year property tax increase City Council passed in 2010 that, lo and behold, is still with us. Or another dreaded levy: the wage tax. It was passed in 1939 as a short-term fix for the city’s finances, but succeeding generations have nonetheless been forced to accept its bite in their paychecks. The latest tax under consideration for immortality is the 1 percent sales-tax increase the state allowed Philadelphia to impose in 2009 as a bridge through the recession.The increase – which raised the tax on most goods and services in Philadelphia from 7 percent to 8 percent – is slated to expire next June. City and state leaders are now talking about making the increase permanent, with the extra money being put toward one or both of the city’s greatest needs: the struggling School District and the vastly underfunded public employee pension fund.

The bulk of that excerpt is a straightforward recitation of how temporary tax hikes become permanent tax hikes, but I have to object to the final sentence. The “city’s greatest needs” are replacing the failed government education monopoly with school choice and reducing the excessive pensions for over-compensated government bureaucrats – such as the city’s former “managing director” (whatever that is), Camille Cates Barnett.

I also can’t resist commenting on the craven behavior of the city’s Chamber of Commerce. I though the national Chamber of Commerce was bad when it endorsed TARP and the faux stimulus, but the local Chamber may be even worse.

Joe Grace, director of public policy at the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, said, “We have not seen any evidence that extending the 1 percent is going to have any negative impact on the local businesses.” The chamber is also backing a $2-a-pack cigarette tax dedicated to the schools. “Our belief is the School District needs resources,” Grace said. “We’re working, along with many others, to close the school-funding gap, really by any means necessary.”

So Mr. Grace thinks more funding for a failed education bureaucracy should be achieved by “any means necessary.” Well, I think a 100 percent tax rate on Mr. Grace should be at the top of the list.

Heck, if France can tax at 100 percent, then so can the City of Philadelphia, and Mr. Grace is a deserving recipient of such a levy.

But there are some opponents of the tax, though they’re not exactly libertarian heroes.

…members of the nearly all-Democratic Philadelphia delegation have raised concerns about using the 1 percent to help fund the schools because it lets the state off the hook for its share of education funding. Danilo Burgos, president of the Dominican Grocers Association, argued that giving sales-tax revenue to the schools was “a Band-Aid.” The state, which has control of the city’s schools, should be responsible for devising “a real solution for our schools.”

In other words, they want more money to waste, but they want to take it from people in the rest of the state.

Sort of reminds me of what the great Frederic Bastiat wrote more than 150 years ago, “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”

But if enough people act as if that fiction is reality, then you get too many people riding in the wagon and not enough people pulling the wagon. That’s a good description of what’s happening in places such as Philadelphia and Greece.

Related posts:Milton Friedman’s “Free to Choose” film transcripts and videos here on http://www.thedailyhatch.org

I have many posts on my blog that include both the transcript and videos of Milton Friedman’s film series “Free to Choose” and here are the episodes that I have posted.

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Here are the posts and you can find the links in order below this.

The Power of the Market from 1990

The Failure of Socialism from 1990

The Anatomy of a Crisis from 1980

What is wrong with our schools?  from 1980

Created Equal from 1980

From Cradle to Grave from 1980

The Power of the Market 1980

Debate on Inflation from 1980

Milton Friedman is the short one!!!

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 5)

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 5-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 4)

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 4-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 3)

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 3-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 2)

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]

“The Power of the Market” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5 How can we have personal freedom without economic freedom? That is why I don’t understand why socialists who value individual freedoms want to take away our economic freedoms.  I wanted to share this info below with you from Milton Friedman who has influenced me greatly over the […]

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1

“Friedman Friday” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 5)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]

“Friedman Friday” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 4)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]

“Friedman Friday” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 3)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]

“Friedman Friday” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 2)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. Abstract: Ronald Reagan introduces this program, and traces a line from Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of […]

“Friedman Friday,” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 7of 7)

TEMIN: We don’t think the big capital arose before the government did? VON HOFFMAN: Listen, what are we doing here? I mean __ defending big government is like defending death and taxes. When was the last time you met anybody that was in favor of big government? FRIEDMAN: Today, today I met Bob Lekachman, I […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 6of 7)

worked pretty well for a whole generation. Now anything that works well for a whole generation isn’t entirely bad. From the fact __ from that fact, and the undeniable fact that things are working poorly now, are we to conclude that the Keynesian sort of mixed regulation was wrong __ FRIEDMAN: Yes. LEKACHMAN: __ or […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 5 of 7)

MCKENZIE: Ah, well, that’s not on our agenda actually. (Laughter) VOICE OFF SCREEN: Why not? MCKENZIE: I boldly repeat the question, though, the expectation having been __ having been raised in the public mind, can you reverse this process where government is expected to produce the happy result? LEKACHMAN: Oh, no way. And it would […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 4 of 7)

The massive growth of central government that started after the depression has continued ever since. If anything, it has even speeded up in recent years. Each year there are more buildings in Washington occupied by more bureaucrats administering more laws. The Great Depression persuaded the public that private enterprise was a fundamentally unstable system. That […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 3 of 7)

Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside is the largest horde of gold in the world. Because the world was on a gold standard in 1929, these vaults, where the U.S. gold was stored, […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

“Friedman Friday” (Part 16) (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 2 of 7)

  George Eccles: Well, then we called all our employees together. And we told them to be at the bank at their place at 8:00 a.m. and just act as if nothing was happening, just have a smile on their face, if they could, and me too. And we have four savings windows and we […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1of 7)

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980), episode 3 – Anatomy of a Crisis. part 1 FREE TO CHOOSE: Anatomy of Crisis Friedman Delancy Street in New York’s lower east side, hardly one of the city’s best known sites, yet what happened in this street nearly 50 years ago continues to effect all of us today. […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

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Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 6 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 6 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: FRIEDMAN: But I personally think it’s a good thing. But I don’t see that any reason whatsoever why I shouldn’t have been required […]

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Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 5 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 5 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Are your voucher schools  going to accept these tough children? COONS: You bet they are. (Several talking at once.) COONS: May I answer […]

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Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 4 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 4 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: It seems to me that if one is truly interested in liberty, which I think is the ultimate value that Milton Friedman talks […]

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Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 3 of transcript and video)

Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 3 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: If it […]

Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 2 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 2 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Groups of concerned parents and teachers decided to do something about it. They used private funds to take over empty stores and they […]

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Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “What is wrong with our schools?” (Part 1 of transcript and video)

Here is the video clip and transcript of the film series FREE TO CHOOSE episode “What is wrong with our schools?” Part 1 of 6.   Volume 6 – What’s Wrong with our Schools Transcript: Friedman: These youngsters are beginning another day at one of America’s public schools, Hyde Park High School in Boston. What happens when […]

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Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 7 of transcript and video)

Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series. Created Equal [7/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose […]

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 6 of transcript and video)

Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series. Created Equal [6/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose […]

“Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 5 of transcript and video)

Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series. Created Equal [5/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose […]

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 4 of transcript and video)

Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series. Created Equal [4/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose […]

Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 3 of transcript and video)

Friedman Friday” Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 3 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other […]

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 2 of transcript and video)

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 2 of transcript and video) Liberals like President Obama want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are […]

Free to Choose by Milton Friedman: Episode “Created Equal” (Part 1 of transcript and video)

 Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan Liberals like President Obama (and John Brummett) want to shoot for an equality of outcome. That system does not work. In fact, our free society allows for the closest gap between the wealthy and the poor. Unlike other countries where free enterprise and other freedoms are not present.  This is a seven part series. […]

Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5

Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 7 of 7)

I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. TEMIN: We don’t think the big capital arose before the government did? VON HOFFMAN: Listen, what are we doing here? I mean __ defending big government is like defending death and taxes. […]

Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 6 of 7)

I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen worked pretty well for a whole generation. Now anything that works well for a whole generation isn’t entirely bad. From the fact __ from that fact, and the undeniable fact that things […]

Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 5 of 7)

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 5 of 7 MCKENZIE: Ah, well, that’s not on our agenda actually. (Laughter) VOICE OFF SCREEN: Why not? MCKENZIE: I boldly repeat the question, though, the expectation having been __ having […]

Milton Friedman Friday: (“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 4 of 7)

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 4 of 7 The massive growth of central government that started after the depression has continued ever since. If anything, it has even speeded up in recent years. Each year there […]

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Milton Friedman Friday: (“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 3 of 7)

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. PART 3 OF 7 Worse still, America’s depression was to become worldwide because of what lies behind these doors. This is the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Inside […]

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Milton Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 2 of 7)

 I am currently going through his film series “Free to Choose” which is one the most powerful film series I have ever seen. For the past 7 years Maureen Ramsey has had to buy food and clothes for her family out of a government handout. For the whole of that time, her husband, Steve, hasn’t […]

Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7)

Friedman Friday:(“Free to Choose” episode 4 – From Cradle to Grave, Part 1 of 7) Volume 4 – From Cradle to Grave Abstract: Since the Depression years of the 1930s, there has been almost continuous expansion of governmental efforts to provide for people’s welfare. First, there was a tremendous expansion of public works. The Social Security Act […]

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“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 7 of 7)

  Michael Harrington:  If you don’t have the expertise, the knowledge technology today, you’re out of the debate. And I think that we have to democratize information and government as well as the economy and society. FRIEDMAN: I am sorry to say Michael Harrington’s solution is not a solution to it. He wants minority rule, I […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 6 of 7)

PETERSON: Well, let me ask you how you would cope with this problem, Dr. Friedman. The people decided that they wanted cool air, and there was tremendous need, and so we built a huge industry, the air conditioning industry, hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous earnings opportunities and nearly all of us now have air […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 5 of 7)

Part 5 Milton Friedman: I do not believe it’s proper to put the situation in terms of industrialist versus government. On the contrary, one of the reasons why I am in favor of less government is because when you have more government industrialists take it over, and the two together form a coalition against the ordinary […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 4 of 7)

The fundamental principal of the free society is voluntary cooperation. The economic market, buying and selling, is one example. But it’s only one example. Voluntary cooperation is far broader than that. To take an example that at first sight seems about as far away as you can get __ the language we speak; the words […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 3 of 7)

  _________________________   Pt3  Nowadays there’s a considerable amount of traffic at this border. People cross a little more freely than they use to. Many people from Hong Kong trade in China and the market has helped bring the two countries closer together, but the barriers between them are still very real. On this side […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 2 of 7)

  Aside from its harbor, the only other important resource of Hong Kong is people __ over 4_ million of them. Like America a century ago, Hong Kong in the past few decades has been a haven for people who sought the freedom to make the most of their own abilities. Many of them are […]

“Friedman Friday” (“Free to Choose” episode 1 – Power of the Market. part 1of 7)

“FREE TO CHOOSE” 1: The Power of the Market (Milton Friedman) Free to Choose ^ | 1980 | Milton Friedman Posted on Monday, July 17, 2006 4:20:46 PM by Choose Ye This Day FREE TO CHOOSE: The Power of the Market Friedman: Once all of this was a swamp, covered with forest. The Canarce Indians […]

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Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 1-5

Debate on Milton Friedman’s cure for inflation

If you would like to see the first three episodes on inflation in Milton Friedman’s film series “Free to Choose” then go to a previous post I did. Ep. 9 – How to Cure Inflation [4/7]. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose (1980) Uploaded by investbligurucom on Jun 16, 2010 While many people have a fairly […]

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“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman believed in liberty (Interview by Charlie Rose of Milton Friedman part 1)

Charlie Rose interview of Milton Friedman My favorite economist: Milton Friedman : A Great Champion of Liberty  by V. Sundaram   Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three US Presidents – Nixon, Ford and Reagan – died last Thursday (16 November, 2006 ) in San Francisco […]

What were the main proposals of Milton Friedman?

Stearns Speaks on House Floor in Support of Balanced Budget Amendment Uploaded by RepCliffStearns on Nov 18, 2011 Speaking on House floor in support of Balanced Budget Resolution, 11/18/2011 ___________ Below are some of the main proposals of Milton Friedman. I highly respected his work. David J. Theroux said this about Milton Friedman’s view concerning […]

“Friedman Friday,” EPISODE “The Failure of Socialism” of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]

Defending Milton Friedman

What a great defense of Milton Friedman!!!!   Defaming Milton Friedman by Johan Norberg This article appeared in Reason Online on September 26, 2008  PRINT PAGE  CITE THIS      Sans Serif      Serif Share with your friends: ShareThis In the future, if you tell a student or a journalist that you favor free markets and limited government, there is […]

Milton and Rose Friedman “Two Lucky People”

Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 2 of 2 Uploaded by PenguinProseMedia on Oct 26, 2011 2nd half of 1994 interview. ________________ I have a lot of respect for the Friedmans.Two Lucky People by Milton and Rose Friedman reviewed by David Frum — October 1998. However, I liked this review below better. It […]

Video clip:Milton Friedman discusses his view of numerous political figures and policy issues in (Part 2)

Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 1 of 2 Uploaded by PenguinProseMedia on Oct 25, 2011 Says Federal Reserve should be abolished, criticizes Keynes. One of Friedman’s best interviews, discussion spans Friedman’s career and his view of numerous political figures and public policy issues. ___________________ Here is a review of “Two Lucky People.” […]

Milton Friedman believed in liberty (Interview by Charlie Rose of Milton Friedman part 1)

Charlie Rose interview of Milton Friedman My favorite economist: Milton Friedman : A Great Champion of Liberty  by V. Sundaram   Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who advocated an unfettered free market and had the ear of three US Presidents – Nixon, Ford and Reagan – died last Thursday (16 November, 2006 ) in San Francisco […]

“The Failure of Socialism” episode of Free to Choose in 1990 by Milton Friedman (Part 1)

Milton Friedman: Free To Choose – The Failure Of Socialism With Ronald Reagan (Full) Published on Mar 19, 2012 by NoNationalityNeeded Milton Friedman’s writings affected me greatly when I first discovered them and I wanted to share with you. We must not head down the path of socialism like Greece has done. Abstract: Ronald Reagan […]

Volume 1: Power of the Market Volume 2: The Tyranny of Control
Volume 3: Anatomy of a Crisis 
Volume 4: From Cradle to Grave
Volume 5: Created Equal
Volume 6: What’s Wrong With Our Schools?
Volume 7: Who Protects the Consumer?
Volume 8: Who Protects the Worker?
Volume 9: How to Cure Inflation
Volume 10: How to Stay Free

Updated 1990 Series:
Volume 1: The Power of the Market
Volume 2: The Tyranny of Control
Volume 3: Freedom & Prosperity
Volume 4: The Failure of Socialism
Volume 5: Created Equal

 

“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman – Power of Choice (Biography) Part 3

Milton Friedman – Power of Choice (Biography) Part 3 Published on May 21, 2012 by BasicEconomics Tribute to Milton Friedman English Pages, 8. 9. 2008 Dear colleagues, dear friends, (1) It is a great honor for me to be asked to say a few words to this distinguished and very knowledgeable audience about one of our greatest […]

“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman – Power of Choice (Biography) Part 2

Milton Friedman – Power of Choice (Biography) Part 2 Published on May 21, 2012 by BasicEconomics My Tribute to Milton Friedman: The Little Giant of Free Market Economics By: admin- 11/17/2006 09:49 AM RESIZE: AAA  Milton Friedman, the intellectual architect of the free-market reforms of the post-World War II era, was a dear friend. I […]

“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman – Power of Choice – Biography (Part 1)

Milton Friedman – Power of Choice – Biography (Part 1) Published on May 20, 2012 by BasicEconomics   David R. Henderson The Pursuit of Happiness ~ Milton Friedman: A Personal Tribute May 2007 • Volume: 57 • Issue: 4 David Henderson (davidrhenderson1950@gmail.com) is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution and an economics professor at […]

Milton Friedman’s Chicago Boys started the Chilean Miracle and it is still helping ordinary people today!!!

Milton Friedman and Chile – The Power of Choice Uploaded on May 13, 2011 In this excerpt from Free To Choose Network’s “The Power of Choice (2006)”, we set the record straight on Milton Friedman’s dealings with Chile — including training the Chicago Boys and his meeting with Augusto Pinochet. Was the tremendous prosperity unleashed […]

Margaret Thatcher admired Milton Friedman

RARE Friedman Footage – On Keys to Reagan and Thatcher’s Success Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman were two of my heroes. Thatcher praises Friedman, her freedom fighter By George Jones, Political Editor 12:01AM GMT 17 Nov 2006 A tireless champion of the free market Let’s not get misty eyed over the Friedman legacy Milton Friedman, […]

Milton Friedman and Chile an update

Milton Friedman was a great economist and a fine speaker. ___________________ I have written before about Milton Friedman’s influence on the economy of Chile. Now I saw this fine article below fromhttp://www.heritage.org  and below that article I have included an article from the Wall Street Journal that talks about Milton Friedman’s influence on Chile. I […]

“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman explains negative income tax to William F. Buckley in 1968

December 06, 2011 03:54 PM Milton Friedman Explains The Negative Income Tax – 1968 0 comments By Gordonskene enlarge Milton Friedman and friends.DOWNLOADS: 36 PLAYS: 35 Embed   The age-old question of Taxes. In the early 1960′s Economist Milton Friedman adopted an idea hatched in England in the 1950′s regarding a Negative Income Tax, to […]

Milton Friedman admired Margaret Thatcher

RARE Friedman Footage – On Keys to Reagan and Thatcher’s Success Margaret Thatcher and Milton Friedman were two of my heroes. Milton Friedman on How Francois Mitterrand (and Failed Lefty Economics) Helped Re-elect Margaret Thatcher Matt Welch|Apr. 10, 2013 9:37 am Yesterday I wrote a column about how Margaret Thatcher liberated Western Europe from the […]

Milton Friedman had a solution to today’s welfare mentality!!!

  I have written about the tremendous increase in the food stamp program the last 9 years before and that means that both President Obama and Bush were guilty of not trying to slow down it’s growth. Furthermore, Republicans have been some of the biggest supporters of the food stamp program. Milton Friedman had a […]

“Friedman Friday” Milton Friedman on “Firing Line” in 1968

Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan And William F. Buckley Jr. Peter Robinson, 12.12.08, 12:01 AM EST In a time of crisis, don’t forget what they had to say. As the federal deficit surpasses $1 trillion, Congress debates a bailout for the Detroit automakers and President-elect Barack Obama draws up plans for a vast new stimulus package, […]

Where things stand in the House? Maybe 208 for Republicans?

Where things stand in the House

The Democrats majority is shrinking and three dozen races have yet to be called

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s majority has shrunk in House, a shock to Democrats and pollsters who were projecting the California Democrat would expand her caucus after Tuesday’s election.

Democrats were optimistic they could flip roughly 10 seats but their expansion efforts came up short, especially in Texas, and they ended up losing seats in Flordia, Oklahoma, Minnesota and elsewhere.

DEM CAUCUS ERUPTS AS MEMBERS SAY PARTY’S LEFTWARD DRIFT HURT MODERATES IN ELECTION

As of 3 p.m. on Friday, Democrats had won 212 seats compared to Republicans’ 194. Another 29 races have yet to be called. Democrats had a net loss of four seats.

Outstanding races are in New York, California, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Utah, Arizona, and elsewhere. When all those votes are counted, Republicans are optimistic their numbers could swell to 208 and beyond, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee.

What’s known is that Republicans have flipped at least seven seats from blue to red and an eighth seat in Michigan that was most recently occupied by a Libertarian. Here’s a snapshot of the GOP victories:

GOP gains in the House

–In Florida, Republican candidate Carlos Gimenez defeated freshman Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in the 26th district. Republican Maria Elvira Salazar defeated freshman Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala in the 27th district.

–In Oklahoma, Republican Stephanie Bice unseated freshman Democratic Rep. Kendra Horn. Horn flipped the seat from red to blue last cycle.

— In South Carolina, freshman congressman Democrat Joe Cunningham was projected to lose his reelection to state GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, flipping South Carolina’s 1st District back to red.

— In Minnesota, Republican Michelle Fischbach ousted longtime Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, toppling the powerful chairman of the House Agriculture Committee in the most pro-Trump district held by a Democrat.

— In New Mexico, Republican Yvette Herrell defeated freshman Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, a freshman Democrat who flipped the 2nd Congressional seat from red to blue in 2018.

— In Iowa’s First Congressional District, Republican state representative and former TV news anchor Ashley Hinson defeated Democratic incumbent Abby Finkenauer.

– In West Michigan, Republican Peter Meijer, an Iraq war veteran whose grandfather started Meijer superstores, defeated Democrat Hillary Scholten, a former Department of Justice and nonprofit lawyer. The Third Congressional District was open after Rep. Justin Amash, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, did not seek reelection.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW HOUSE RESULTS

Republicans say more victories are on the horizon

.

Party officials are most optimistic about reclaiming two seats in New York that Democrats flipped in 2018. Votes are still being counted but Republican Nicole Malliotakis has a notable lead over freshman Rep. Max Rose in the Staten Island-Brooklyn district. And former GOP Rep. Claudia Tenney was also ahead in the 22nd District seat she lost two years ago to Rep. Anthony Brindisi.

Democrats have gained two open seats in North Carolina thanks to redrawn congressional maps that favored them and will welcome Deborah Ross and Kathy Manning to their caucus in January.

And Democrats flipped Georgia’s 7th Congressional District held by retiring Rep. Rob Woodall, R-Ga. Democrat Carolyn Bourdeaux beat GOP candidate Rich McCormick in the suburban Atlanta district, the Associated Press called on Friday.

That means Democrats so far have a net loss of four seats in the House.

WHERE THINGS STAND: BATTLE FOR THE SENATE

Democrats think they can hold onto many close races that have not been called and have two other possible pick-up opportunities by defeating Rep. Jeff Van Drew in New Jersey and Rep. Mike Garcia in California.

On a call Thursday afternoon with Democratic House members, Rep. Cheri Bustos, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), expressed frustration with the polling and election forecasts that all pointed to House Democrats expanding their majority.

“I’m furious,” Bustos told her colleagues, according to a source familiar with the call. “Something went wrong here across the entire political world. Our polls, Senate polls, Gov polls, presidential polls, Republican polls, public polls, turnout modeling, and prognosticators all pointed to one political environment – that environment never materialized.”

I have written about the tremendous increase in the food stamp program the last 9 years before and that means that both President Obama and Bush were guilty of not trying to slow down it’s growth. Furthermore, Republicans have been some of the biggest supporters of the food stamp program. Milton Friedman had a good solution to help end the welfare state and wish more people would pay attention to it.   Growing government also encourages waste and hurt growth but more importantly it causes people to become dependent on the government as this article and cartoon below show.

My great fear is that the “social capital” of self reliance in America will slowly disappear and that the United States will turn into a European-style welfare state.

That’s the message in the famous “riding in the wagon” cartoons that went viral and became the most-viewed post on this blog.

Well, this Glenn McCoy cartoon has a similar theme.

Obama Voter Cartoon

The only thing I would change is that the rat would become a “pro-government voter” or “left-wing voter” instead of an “Obama voter.” Just like I wasn’t satisfied with an otherwise very good Chuck Asay cartoon showing the struggle between producers and moochers.

That’s for two reasons. First, I’m not partisan. My goal is to spread a message of liberty, not encourage people to vote for or against any candidate.

Second, I’ve been very critical of Obama, but I was also very critical of Bush. Indeed, Bush was a bigger spender than Obama! And Clinton was quite good, so party labels often don’t matter.

But I’m getting wonky. Enjoy the cartoon and feel free to share it widely.

Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth

Uploaded on Aug 17, 2009

This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video analyzes how excessive government spending undermines economic performance. While acknowledging that a very modest level of government spending on things such as “public goods” can facilitate growth, the video outlines eight different ways that that big government hinders prosperity. This video focuses on theory and will be augmented by a second video looking at the empirical evidence favoring smaller government.

Related posts:

If increase in food stamps was just because of recession then why spending go from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007?

If the increase in food stamps was just because of the recession then why did the spending go from $19.8 billion in 2000 to $37.9 billion in 2007? The Facts about Food Stamps Everyone Should Hear Rachel Sheffield and T. Elliot Gaiser May 27, 2013 at 12:00 pm (7) Newscom A recent US News & […]

Tell the 48 million food stamps users to eat more broccoli!!!!

Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed             Uploaded on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ We got to slow down the growth of Food Stamps. One […]

Republicans for more food stamps?

Eight Reasons Why Big Government Hurts Economic Growth __________________ We got to cut spending and we must first start with food stamp program and we need some Senators that are willing to make the tough cuts. Food Stamp Republicans Posted by Chris Edwards Newt Gingrich had fun calling President Obama the “food stamp president,” but […]

Obama promotes food stamps but Milton Friedman had a better suggestion

Milton Friedman’s negative income tax explained by Friedman in 1968: We need to cut back on the Food Stamp program and not try to increase it. What really upsets me is that when the government gets involved in welfare there is a welfare trap created for those who become dependent on the program. Once they […]

400% increase in food stamps since 2000

Welfare Can And Must Be Reformed Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Jun 29, 2010 If America does not get welfare reform under control, it will bankrupt America. But the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector has a five-step plan to reform welfare while protecting our most vulnerable. __________________________ If welfare increases as much as it has in the […]

Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration

The sad fact is that Food stamp spending has doubled under the Obama Administration. A Bumper Crop of Food Stamps Amy Payne May 21, 2013 at 7:01 am Tweet this Where do food stamps come from? They come from taxpayers—certainly not from family farms. Yet the “farm” bill, a recurring subsidy-fest in Congress, is actually […]

Which states are the leaders in food stamp consumption?

I am glad that my state of Arkansas is not the leader in food stamps!!! Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, Which State Has the Highest Food Stamp Usage of All? March 19, 2013 by Dan Mitchell The food stamp program seems to be a breeding ground of waste, fraud, and abuse. Some of the horror stories […]

Why not cancel the foodstamp program and let the churches step in?

Government Must Cut Spending Uploaded by HeritageFoundation on Dec 2, 2010 The government can cut roughly $343 billion from the federal budget and they can do so immediately. __________ We are becoming a country filled with people that dependent on the federal government when we should be growing our economy by lowering taxes and putting […]

Food Stamp Program is constantly ripped off and should be discontinued

Uploaded by oversightandreform on Mar 6, 2012 Learn More at http://oversight.house.gov The Oversight Committee is examining reports of food stamp merchants previously disqualified who continue to defraud the program. According to a Scripps Howard News Service report, food stamp fraud costs taxpayers hundreds of millions every year. Watch the Oversight hearing live tomorrow at 930 […]

 

2020 Was a Disaster for Democrats Trying to Take Over State Houses (Democrats failed so bad that they even couldn’t flip the Arizona State Senate which they told us was a lock a few days ago!!!!)

__________

Democrats failed so bad that they even couldn’t flip the Arizona State Senate which they told us was a lock a few days ago!!!!

The Texas State Capitol remains under tight Republican control.Photo: Joe Ybarra/EyeEm/Getty Images

Often the returns for state legislative races are slow to come in, and they are understandably overshadowed by presidential and congressional results. But of all the disappointments Democrats suffered on and immediately after November 3, a pattern of failure in expensive and ambitious efforts to flip state legislative chambers may have the most long-lasting effects. As Politico reports, it seems to have gone pretty badly for the Donkey Party way down ballot:

An abysmal showing by Democrats in state legislative races on Tuesday not only denied them victories in Sun Belt and Rust Belt states that would have positioned them to advance their policy agenda — it also put the party at a disadvantage ahead of the redistricting that will determine the balance of power for the next decade …

By Wednesday night, Democrats had not flipped a single statehouse chamber in its favor. And it remained completely blocked from the map-making process in several key states — including Texas, North Carolina and Florida, which could have a combined 82 congressional seats by 2022 — where the GOP retained control of the state legislatures.

After months of record-breaking fundraising by their candidates and a constellation of outside groups, Democrats fell far short of their goals and failed to build upon their 2018 successes to capture state chambers they had been targeting for years.

It will take a while to sort through the debris, but it appears that the same disappointing suburban results that hurt Democrats in U.S. House races kept them from making the expected gains in state legislative contests as well. Indeed, as the National Conference of State Legislatures reports, the power dynamics in state governments in 2021 are likely to be the same as those in place right now:

[O]f the chambers we can call, we have zero changes so far. In other words, this appears to be a remarkably status quo election in the U.S. states.

It looks like this will be the least party control changes on Election Day since at least 1944 when only four chambers changed hands. It’s still possible that there could be even fewer than four flips as a result of Tuesday’s voting. In the 1926 and 1928 elections, only one chamber changed hands. And 2020 could conceivably match that.

There were only 11 gubernatorial elections this year, and most of them were completely noncompetitive. Just one state changed hands: Montana, where Republican congressman Greg Gianforte easily defeated Lieutenant Governor Mike Cooney for the position of two-term Democratic governor Steve Bullock (who himself ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate).

But the really bitter setbacks for Democrats were in state legislative races in states where redistricting could have a significant impact on drawing new and favorable congressional districts with the 2020 Census results, as Politico notes:

Votes are still being tallied, but it appears Democrats missed nearly all of their top targets — though there’s a slight chance they could gain control in the Arizona House and Senate. Party operatives concede they are not on track to win the Michigan or the Iowa houses, either chamber in Pennsylvania or the Minnesota state Senate, which was their most promising target this cycle.

Democrats did not flip the two seats needed to claim the majority in Minnesota’s upper chamber, which would have given them trifecta control of both chambers and the governor’s office. That outcome gives them less of an opening to protect some of the Democratic incumbents clustered around the Twin Cities next year when Minnesota is likely to lose a seat in the next redistricting.

The biggest disappointment came in the seat-rich state of Texas, Democrats needed nine seats to reclaim the majority after flipping a dozen in the midterms. Though some races remain uncalled, so far Democrats were able to unseat one incumbent and Republicans offset that with another pickup.

Georgia and North Carolina were additional states with large U.S. House delegations where Democrats had high hopes of busting up Republican control. It’s true that a trend toward bipartisan or nonpartisan redistricting commissions will curb gerrymandering in this next decennial cycle, but not in most Republican-controlled states. And it’s worth remembering that last year, the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear federal courts would no longer even consider interfering with state legislatures engaged in partisan gerrymandering.

Demographic trends will help Democrats in some of their target states in the future. But in many, for the next decade, they will be struggling uphill as Republicans succeed in retrenching their power in the crucial state legislative election years ending in zeroes.

Interpreting the Election Results

For what it’s worth, my presidential prediction for 2020 will probably turn out to be more accurate than my presidential prediction for 2016.

But I doubt anyone cares about that. Let’s instead look at what happened last night (and, in some cases, what is still happening).

President

It appears that Biden will prevail in the battle for the White House when the dust settles, but you can see from this Washington Post map that the race was much closer than most people expected (Pennsylvania is expected to shift to Biden as mail-in votes are counted, and perhaps Georgia as well).

If that’s the final result, here are two obvious takeaways based on where a president has a lot of unilateral power.

Other policy areas generally require agreement between the executive branch and the legislative branch, so we can’t know the impact of a Biden presidency without perusing congressional results.

Senate

In my humble opinion, the big news of the night is that Republicans appear to have retained control of the Senate.

If true, that means some left-wing goals are now very unlikely.

There won’t be any court packing. There won’t be any serious effort to increase the number of Democratic senators by granting statehood to Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.

But let’s focus on the economic issues. Here are some quick takeaways.

House of Representatives

It appears that Republicans will gain seats, which is contrary to all expectations.

That being said, there’s zero possibility of a GOP takeover, so Nancy Pelosi will remain in charge.

Ballot Initiatives

I wrote two weeks ago about this election’s six most important ballot initiatives.

The great news is that taxpayers scored a big victory by defeating the effort to get rid of the flat tax in Illinois an replace it with a so-called progressive tax. Winning that battle probably won’t rescue the Prairie State, but at least it will slow down its march to bankruptcy.

The other five battles mostly were decided correctly – at least based on the latest vote margins.

  • California voters rejected an initiative that would allow the state to engage in racial discrimination.
  • The California initiative to weaken limits on property taxes is trailing.
  • The Colorado initiative to lower the state’s flat tax appears prevailed.
  • The Colorado initiative to strengthen TABOR (the state’s spending cap) is leading.
  • The one clear piece of bad news is that an Arizona initiative to impose a big increase in the top income tax rate appears likely to prevail.

What’s the future for Trump and Trumpism?

Regular readers know I want the GOP to be the Party of Reaganrather than the Party of Trump.

So I will be very interested to see whether Trump’s apparent defeat means Republicans go back to (at least pretending to favor) conventional small-government conservatism.

That will have the be the topic of a future column.

A Silver Lining for Republicans

The party controlling the White House usually loses mid-term elections. For recent examples, Democrats won the House in 2018 and there were big victories for the GOP in 2010 and 2014during the Obama years.

In all likelihood, Republicans will now do much better in the 2022 midterm election with Biden in the White House instead of Trump.

A Silver Lining for Taxpayers

It’s not something that can be quantified, but congressional Republicans will now become much better on spending issues. They’ll no longer face pressure to go along with Trump’s profligacy and they’ll have a partisan incentive to oppose Biden’s profligate agenda.

P.S. Whether you’re happy or sad about the election results, remember that it’s always appropriate to laugh at the clowns and crooks in Washington.

President Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Tom Selleck, Dudley Moore, Lucille Ball at a Tribute to Bob Hope’s 80th birthday at the Kennedy Center. 5/20/83.

__________________________

Dan Mitchell is very good at giving speeches and making it very simple to understand economic policy and how it affects a nation. Mitchell also talks about slowing the growth of government and he gives credit to Clinton and Reagan.

Probably my favorite subject that Dan has covered is the Laffer Curve. I got a chance to hear Arthur Laffer speak at Memphis St University in 1981 and Laffer actually predicted what would happen in the next 7 years because of the Reagan Tax Cuts and all of his predictions came true. What did we learn from the Laffer Curve in the 1980′s? Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!! The funny thing is that the world saw what we did and followed along. The drop of the industrialized countries during this same time was 26% (from 68% to 42% on average). It reminded me of Milton Friedman 1980 book “Free to Choose” and his answer to the 11% inflation that President Carter was dealing with in 1980. Reagan put Friedman’s solution into action and 5 years later inflation was under control.

Below is a fine article and video from Dan Mitchell.

(R Row, from front to rear) Milton Friedman, George Shultz, Pres. Ronald Reagan, Arthur Burns, William Simon and Walter Wriston & unknown at a meeting of White House economic advisers.
(R Row, from front to rear) Milton Friedman, George Shultz, Pres. Ronald Reagan, Arthur Burns, William Simon and Walter Wriston & unknown at a meeting of White House economic

I’ve narrated a video that cites Economic Freedom of the World data to explain the five major factors that determine economic performance.

But that video is only six minutes long, so I only skim the surface. For those of you who feel that you’re missing out, you can listen to me pontificate on public policy and growth for more than sixty minutes in this video of a class I taught at the Citadel in South Carolina (and if you’re a glutton for punishment, there’s also nearly an hour of Q&A).

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Daniel J. Mitchell

Published on Apr 2, 2012

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Daniel J. Mitchell speaks to cadets economics and conservatism. This is the 10th lecture in the seminar series titled “The Conservative Intellectual Tradition in America.”

_______________

There are two points that are worth some additional attention.

1. In my discussion of regulation, I mention that health and safety rules can actually cause needless deaths by undermining economic performance. I elaborated on this topic when I waded into the election-season debateabout whether Obama supporters were right to accuse Romney of causing a worker’s premature death.

2. In my discussion of deficits and debt, I criticize the Congressional Budget Office for assuming that government fiscal balance is the key determinant of economic growth. And since CBO assumes you maximize growth by somehow having large surpluses, the bureaucrats actually argue that higher taxes are good for growth and their analysis implies that the growth-maximizing tax rate is 100 percent.

P.S. If you prefer much shorter doses of Dan Mitchell, you can watch my one-minute videos on tax reform that were produced by the Heartland Institute.

Related posts:

Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!!

What did we learn from the Laffer Curve in the 1980′s? Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!! A Lesson on the Laffer Curve for Barack Obama November 6, 2011 by Dan Mitchell One of my frustrating missions […]

Two Lessons from Coolidge: Small government is the best way to achieve competent and effective government and Higher tax rates don’t automatically lead to more tax revenue

Will Rogers has a great quote that I love. He noted, “Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago”(Paula McSpadden Love, The Will Rogers Book, (1972) p. 20.) Dan Mitchell praises Calvin Coolidge for keeping the federal government small. […]

Open letter to President Obama (Part 296) (Laffer curve strikes again!!)

President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. The way […]

Open letter to President Obama (Part 282, How the Laffer Curve worked in the 20th century over and over again!!!)

Dan Mitchell does a great job explaining the Laffer Curve President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a […]

Laffer curve hits tax hikers pretty hard (includes cartoon)

I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism,  Greece,  welfare state or on gun control. Today’s cartoon deals with the Laffer curve. Revenge of the Laffer Curve…Again and Again and Again March 27, 2013 […]

Portugal and the Laffer Curve

Class Warfare just don’t pay it seems. Why can’t we learn from other countries’ mistakes? Class Warfare Tax Policy Causes Portugal to Crash on the Laffer Curve, but Will Obama Learn from this Mistake? December 31, 2012 by Dan Mitchell Back in mid-2010, I wrote that Portugal was going to exacerbate its fiscal problems by raising […]

President Obama ignores warnings about Laffer Curve

The Laffer Curve – Explained Uploaded by Eddie Stannard on Nov 14, 2011 This video explains the relationship between tax rates, taxable income, and tax revenue. The key lesson is that the Laffer Curve is not an all-or-nothing proposition, where we have to choose between the exaggerated claim that “all tax cuts pay for themselves” […]

Harding,Kennedy and Reagan proved that the Laffer Curve works

 I enjoyed this article below because it demonstrates that the Laffer Curve has been working for almost 100 years now when it is put to the test in the USA. I actually got to hear Arthur Laffer speak in person in 1981 and he told us in advance what was going to happen the 1980′s […]

The Laffer Curve Wreaks Havoc in the United Kingdom

I got to hear Arthur Laffer speak back in 1981 and he predicted what would happen in the next few years with the Reagan tax cuts and he was right with every prediction. The Laffer Curve Wreaks Havoc in the United Kingdom July 1, 2012 by Dan Mitchell Back in 2010, I excoriated the new […]

Liberals act like the Laffer Curve does not exist.

Raising taxes will not work. Liberals act like the Laffer Curve does not exist. The Laffer Curve Shows that Tax Increases Are a Very Bad Idea – even if They Generate More Tax Revenue April 10, 2012 by Dan Mitchell The Laffer Curve is a graphical representation of the relationship between tax rates, tax revenue, and […]

 

Dan Mitchell of Center for Freedom and Prosperity article “Interpreting the Election Results”

__________

Interpreting the Election Results

For what it’s worth, my presidential prediction for 2020 will probably turn out to be more accurate than my presidential prediction for 2016.

But I doubt anyone cares about that. Let’s instead look at what happened last night (and, in some cases, what is still happening).

President

It appears that Biden will prevail in the battle for the White House when the dust settles, but you can see from this Washington Post map that the race was much closer than most people expected (Pennsylvania is expected to shift to Biden as mail-in votes are counted, and perhaps Georgia as well).

If that’s the final result, here are two obvious takeaways based on where a president has a lot of unilateral power.

Other policy areas generally require agreement between the executive branch and the legislative branch, so we can’t know the impact of a Biden presidency without perusing congressional results.

Senate

In my humble opinion, the big news of the night is that Republicans appear to have retained control of the Senate.

If true, that means some left-wing goals are now very unlikely.

There won’t be any court packing. There won’t be any serious effort to increase the number of Democratic senators by granting statehood to Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.

But let’s focus on the economic issues. Here are some quick takeaways.

House of Representatives

It appears that Republicans will gain seats, which is contrary to all expectations.

That being said, there’s zero possibility of a GOP takeover, so Nancy Pelosi will remain in charge.

Ballot Initiatives

I wrote two weeks ago about this election’s six most important ballot initiatives.

The great news is that taxpayers scored a big victory by defeating the effort to get rid of the flat tax in Illinois an replace it with a so-called progressive tax. Winning that battle probably won’t rescue the Prairie State, but at least it will slow down its march to bankruptcy.

The other five battles mostly were decided correctly – at least based on the latest vote margins.

  • California voters rejected an initiative that would allow the state to engage in racial discrimination.
  • The California initiative to weaken limits on property taxes is trailing.
  • The Colorado initiative to lower the state’s flat tax appears prevailed.
  • The Colorado initiative to strengthen TABOR (the state’s spending cap) is leading.
  • The one clear piece of bad news is that an Arizona initiative to impose a big increase in the top income tax rate appears likely to prevail.

What’s the future for Trump and Trumpism?

Regular readers know I want the GOP to be the Party of Reaganrather than the Party of Trump.

So I will be very interested to see whether Trump’s apparent defeat means Republicans go back to (at least pretending to favor) conventional small-government conservatism.

That will have the be the topic of a future column.

A Silver Lining for Republicans

The party controlling the White House usually loses mid-term elections. For recent examples, Democrats won the House in 2018 and there were big victories for the GOP in 2010 and 2014during the Obama years.

In all likelihood, Republicans will now do much better in the 2022 midterm election with Biden in the White House instead of Trump.

A Silver Lining for Taxpayers

It’s not something that can be quantified, but congressional Republicans will now become much better on spending issues. They’ll no longer face pressure to go along with Trump’s profligacy and they’ll have a partisan incentive to oppose Biden’s profligate agenda.

P.S. Whether you’re happy or sad about the election results, remember that it’s always appropriate to laugh at the clowns and crooks in Washington.

President Reagan, Nancy Reagan, Tom Selleck, Dudley Moore, Lucille Ball at a Tribute to Bob Hope’s 80th birthday at the Kennedy Center. 5/20/83.

__________________________

Dan Mitchell is very good at giving speeches and making it very simple to understand economic policy and how it affects a nation. Mitchell also talks about slowing the growth of government and he gives credit to Clinton and Reagan.

Probably my favorite subject that Dan has covered is the Laffer Curve. I got a chance to hear Arthur Laffer speak at Memphis St University in 1981 and Laffer actually predicted what would happen in the next 7 years because of the Reagan Tax Cuts and all of his predictions came true. What did we learn from the Laffer Curve in the 1980′s? Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!! The funny thing is that the world saw what we did and followed along. The drop of the industrialized countries during this same time was 26% (from 68% to 42% on average). It reminded me of Milton Friedman 1980 book “Free to Choose” and his answer to the 11% inflation that President Carter was dealing with in 1980. Reagan put Friedman’s solution into action and 5 years later inflation was under control.

Below is a fine article and video from Dan Mitchell.

(R Row, from front to rear) Milton Friedman, George Shultz, Pres. Ronald Reagan, Arthur Burns, William Simon and Walter Wriston & unknown at a meeting of White House economic advisers.
(R Row, from front to rear) Milton Friedman, George Shultz, Pres. Ronald Reagan, Arthur Burns, William Simon and Walter Wriston & unknown at a meeting of White House economic

I’ve narrated a video that cites Economic Freedom of the World data to explain the five major factors that determine economic performance.

But that video is only six minutes long, so I only skim the surface. For those of you who feel that you’re missing out, you can listen to me pontificate on public policy and growth for more than sixty minutes in this video of a class I taught at the Citadel in South Carolina (and if you’re a glutton for punishment, there’s also nearly an hour of Q&A).

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Daniel J. Mitchell

Published on Apr 2, 2012

Cato Institute Senior Fellow Daniel J. Mitchell speaks to cadets economics and conservatism. This is the 10th lecture in the seminar series titled “The Conservative Intellectual Tradition in America.”

_______________

There are two points that are worth some additional attention.

1. In my discussion of regulation, I mention that health and safety rules can actually cause needless deaths by undermining economic performance. I elaborated on this topic when I waded into the election-season debateabout whether Obama supporters were right to accuse Romney of causing a worker’s premature death.

2. In my discussion of deficits and debt, I criticize the Congressional Budget Office for assuming that government fiscal balance is the key determinant of economic growth. And since CBO assumes you maximize growth by somehow having large surpluses, the bureaucrats actually argue that higher taxes are good for growth and their analysis implies that the growth-maximizing tax rate is 100 percent.

P.S. If you prefer much shorter doses of Dan Mitchell, you can watch my one-minute videos on tax reform that were produced by the Heartland Institute.

Related posts:

Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!!

What did we learn from the Laffer Curve in the 1980′s? Lowering top tax rate from 70% to 28% from 1980 to 1988 and those earning over $200,000 paid 99 billion in taxes instead of 19 billion!!!! A Lesson on the Laffer Curve for Barack Obama November 6, 2011 by Dan Mitchell One of my frustrating missions […]

Two Lessons from Coolidge: Small government is the best way to achieve competent and effective government and Higher tax rates don’t automatically lead to more tax revenue

Will Rogers has a great quote that I love. He noted, “Lord, the money we do spend on Government and it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money twenty years ago”(Paula McSpadden Love, The Will Rogers Book, (1972) p. 20.) Dan Mitchell praises Calvin Coolidge for keeping the federal government small. […]

Open letter to President Obama (Part 296) (Laffer curve strikes again!!)

President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here. The way […]

Open letter to President Obama (Part 282, How the Laffer Curve worked in the 20th century over and over again!!!)

Dan Mitchell does a great job explaining the Laffer Curve President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a […]

Laffer curve hits tax hikers pretty hard (includes cartoon)

I have put up lots of cartoons from Dan Mitchell’s blog before and they have got lots of hits before. Many of them have dealt with the economy, eternal unemployment benefits, socialism,  Greece,  welfare state or on gun control. Today’s cartoon deals with the Laffer curve. Revenge of the Laffer Curve…Again and Again and Again March 27, 2013 […]

Portugal and the Laffer Curve

Class Warfare just don’t pay it seems. Why can’t we learn from other countries’ mistakes? Class Warfare Tax Policy Causes Portugal to Crash on the Laffer Curve, but Will Obama Learn from this Mistake? December 31, 2012 by Dan Mitchell Back in mid-2010, I wrote that Portugal was going to exacerbate its fiscal problems by raising […]

President Obama ignores warnings about Laffer Curve

The Laffer Curve – Explained Uploaded by Eddie Stannard on Nov 14, 2011 This video explains the relationship between tax rates, taxable income, and tax revenue. The key lesson is that the Laffer Curve is not an all-or-nothing proposition, where we have to choose between the exaggerated claim that “all tax cuts pay for themselves” […]

Harding,Kennedy and Reagan proved that the Laffer Curve works

 I enjoyed this article below because it demonstrates that the Laffer Curve has been working for almost 100 years now when it is put to the test in the USA. I actually got to hear Arthur Laffer speak in person in 1981 and he told us in advance what was going to happen the 1980′s […]

The Laffer Curve Wreaks Havoc in the United Kingdom

I got to hear Arthur Laffer speak back in 1981 and he predicted what would happen in the next few years with the Reagan tax cuts and he was right with every prediction. The Laffer Curve Wreaks Havoc in the United Kingdom July 1, 2012 by Dan Mitchell Back in 2010, I excoriated the new […]

Liberals act like the Laffer Curve does not exist.

Raising taxes will not work. Liberals act like the Laffer Curve does not exist. The Laffer Curve Shows that Tax Increases Are a Very Bad Idea – even if They Generate More Tax Revenue April 10, 2012 by Dan Mitchell The Laffer Curve is a graphical representation of the relationship between tax rates, tax revenue, and […]