Free Republic

For years, I've heard American leftists say Sweden is proof that socialism works, that it doesn't have to turn out as badly as the Soviet Union or Cuba or Venezuela did.But that's not what Swedish historian Johan Norberg says in a new documentary and Stossel TV video."Sweden is not socialist -- because the government doesn't own the means of production. To see that, you have to go to Venezuela or Cuba or North Korea," says Norberg."We did have a period in the 1970s and 1980s when we had something that resembled socialism: a big government that taxed and spent heavily....

Socialism is hot.Famous actors recently made a commercial proclaiming that "democratic socialism" creates some of the best parts of America. It's "your kids' public school" (says Susan Sarandon), the "interstate highway system" (Rosario Dawson), "public libraries" (Jay Ferguson), "EMTs" (Ethan Embry), "workers who plow our streets" (Max Carver) and "scientists" (Danny DeVito).Wow. I guess every popular thing government does is socialism.The celebrities conclude: "We can do better when we do them together."There is sometimes truth to that, but the movie stars don't know that America's first highways were built by capitalist contractors. They also probably didn't notice that the more...

The Senate on Wednesday defeated a Democratic measure to overrule President Trump’s expansion of non-ObamaCare insurance plans as Democrats seek to highlight health care ahead of the midterm elections. The Democratic measure would have overruled Trump’s expansion of short-term health insurance plans, which do not have to cover people with pre-existing conditions or cover a range of health services like mental health or prescription drugs. It was defeated on an extremely narrow, mostly party line 50-50 vote, with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) voting with Democrats in favor of overturning the short-term plans. Republicans argue the short-term plans simply provide a...

At a conference examining California’s housing crisis, one of the more liberal audience members expressed her frustration at those of us who even talked about free markets. I don’t recall her exact words, but the mere mention of such ideas were a non-starter. Apparently, such notions shouldn’t be raised in polite company given what they mean for the poor and disenfranchised. Couldn’t we just get back to discussing government regulations and programs? That comment summarized the problem with discussing public policy in a state where such ideas are considered arcane. The notion that people should be free to pursue their...

One of the most challenging and important jobs for an economics professor is to teach students how little we know and can possibly know. My longtime friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell says, "It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." Nobel laureate Friedrich August von Hayek admonished, "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design." The fact that we have gross ignorance about how the world operates is ignored by the know-it-all elites who seek to control our lives. Let's...

LONDON — The rest of the planet bears a warning for President Trump’s plan to lean heavily on private business in conjuring a trillion dollars’ worth of American infrastructure: Handing profit-making companies responsibility for public works can produce trouble. In India, politically connected firms have captured contracts on the strength of relationships with officialdom, yielding defective engineering at bloated prices. When Britain handed control to private companies to upgrade London’s subway system more than a decade ago, the result was substandard, budget-busting work, prompting the government to step back in. Canada has suffered a string of excessive costs on public...

Continuing from my previous article on the Democrat's war on free markets and unfair anti-capitalist regulations targeting indie software makers, I said that the best way to stick it to these big companies that back the socialist agenda of the DNC was to buy indie and boycott the big bolshevik businesses. I mean they got to where they were because of capitalism and now they want to ruin it for all of us just so they can avoid competition! SO! We here present our top 10 list of indie games you gotta play! Along with Top 10 Flash games online!...

"Prior to this year, the House voted to repeal Obamacare more than 50 times ---when it was clear that President Obama would veto the bill. The problem we are facing is that some of the people who voted for repeal 50 times will not vote for repeal when it counts, when it is "our moment in time," with Republicans in control of Congress and the presidency." --Rep Dave Brat "This has been my complaint since before Obamacare became law. Nothing I’ve seen addresses the problem of increased costs of medical care. All these bills just shift the rising costs from...

The only way I'd be happy with a non repeal of Obamacare is if the president and the secretary can snip the unconstitutional monopolistic strings that prohibit free enterprise from providing competing solutions. Someone suggested leaving Obamacare basically intact for those who choose to provide or subscribe to it, but allow new free market solutions to rise up and compete. That's not a bad idea to break the stalemate. My understanding is the Obamacare law leaves many decisions for the president and the HHS secretary to make. During the rollout and throughout the remaining years of Obama's term, the president...

A whole lot of congressional swamp dwellers and citizens alike are entirely missing the point regarding a complete and final repeal of Obamacare. How soon they forget the outrage of we the people when Obamacare was forced down our throats and then a redoubling of that outrage when Chief Justice Roberts failed to uphold the constitution and toss it out. Have they forgotten why the tea party sprang up and why we drove out packs of rats and herds of RINOs in the last several election cycles? We the self-sufficient free citizens of America do not want a federal takeover...

The Federal Reserve gives us the freedom to buy things now that we would otherwise have to wait for.In looking at the Federal Reserve, it is important to note that this is a money system, not just a group of people sitting in a conference room controlling everything having to do with the US dollar. The Fed is a system just like the government of the US is a system. What that means is that no one controls it, and that it is much bigger than any one person or group of people could ever control. They can guide it,...

Every conservative and every American worth his salt knows that there is no such thing as free lunch. And that big government does not make us more free. Too bad they get all balled up when they talk about globalism (big government on steroids) and free trade (government control of trade on steroids).

Trump’s predecessors in both parties enabled government to interfere with private enterprise. If Trump truly wants to drain the swamp, his incoming administration cannot pick economic winners and losers. It must create a pro-business climate virtually free of regulations and burdensome taxes to see true economic prosperity.

In 2006, Chris Hausman, a fourth-generation Midwestern farmer long accustomed to depending on government support for survival, traveled across the world to witness a revolution in agriculture. It had been more than 20 years since a left-leaning government in New Zealand chose to eliminate government subsidies for farmers, and Hausman was surprised at what had transpired since. “I will tell you it was a shock to their agricultural system,” says Hausman, 58, who farms corn and soybeans on a 1,500-acre plot 150 miles south of Chicago. “You had a system dictated by government programs that was thrown out the window...

Famed investor Wilbur Ross recently told CNBC that “Trump represents a more radical new approach to government that the nation’s economy desperately needs.” He’s right. Trump seeks an overthrow of the establishment. He’s a disrupter. Just what we need to fix the economy. The situation is that desperate. The last 15 years of economic policy, especially the last eight years, represent a relapse that harks back to the 1970s. Now like then, we have a high-tax, high-spend, high-regulation, Fed-pump-priming, standard-less dollar-manipulation policy mix. In general, it’s a government-planning approach in the U.S. and around the world. We’ve not experienced high...

If you're like me you're probably searching for a third party candidate in the wake of Donald Trump's clinching of the GOP nomination. For those of you considering the Libertarian Party (LP), I hope you'll reconsider. The party's current frontrunner, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, doesn't seem to understand this liberty thing. He thinks it means drugs and abortion but should you decide that you don't want to engage in a business transaction he wants the government to coerce you. The party's other candidates aren't quite as extreme in their statism though none of them will make an unqualified...

A curious poll out of Harvard was published on Monday showing that 51% of people between 18 and 29 do not support capitalism. But the curious aspect of this poll is that only 33% of respondents supported socialism. The dichotomy suggests that either most young people haven't a clue about the differernce between capitalism and socialism or, as the researchers believe, the opposition to capitalism arises out of anger at the status quo. Washington Post: The Harvard University survey, which polled young adults between ages 18 and 29, found that 51 percent of respondents do not support capitalism. Just 42...

Typical leftists–they want free stuff, but they don’t want to pay for it. In a poll conducted by Vox and Morning Consult during the first week in April, they found that supporters for Sen. Bernie Sanders unsurprisingly have strong support for things like free college tuition and universal health care. They register at 70+ percent in favor for both initiatives. Then, the question turns to how much are they willing to pay for Sanders' agenda. This is where support dips dramatically, especially when two in three Bernie-ites don’t want to pay more than $1,000 for a single-payer health care system....

The intensity with which some American companies try to use the government to trick or deceive consumers is astonishing. Yet the extent to which lawmakers seem content to cater to these crony pursuits never disappoints, either. Case in point: the current attempt to protect contact lens sellers from competition at the expense of consumers. An estimated 40 million Americans wear contact lenses. That's a $4 billion industry. Thanks to the heavy-handed government regulation of all things health care, contacts already cost more than they should. However, if an ongoing effort to reduce competition through government cronyism were to succeed, costs...

When faced with a choice between different politicians at election time, our natural instinct is to ask “Which one will let me do what I want to do?” It’s natural. Sure, it may seem selfish, single-minded, narrow. But it’s natural. We have only one vote, so we think of our own lives, and the possible ways that the candidates might want to control our lives, and we think about what we personally like to do, and so we study the candidates to see which ones seem most open-minded about “allowing” us our freedom, vs. which ones want to take it...