Free Republic

Our current welfare system is clearly a mess. The federal government currently funds 126 separate anti-poverty programs, at least 72 of which provide either cash or in-kind benefits to individuals. For example, there are 33 housing programs, run by four different cabinet departments, including bizarrely the Department of Energy. There are currently 21 different programs providing food or food purchasing assistance. These programs are administered by three different federal departments and one independent agency.  There are eight different health care programs, administered by five separate agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services. And six cabinet departments and five...

Imagine if everyone was guaranteed healthcare and an income floor. People would still pursue their calling in life. In fact, they could do so more freely with more creativity and daring without the fear of not making ends meet. It would unleash the enormous creative potential that lays dormant within the hearts and minds of so many office workers, toiling away as their best ideas and dreams wither away.

Tech's favorite policy, universal basic income, is about to get its first big test 6,000 Kenyans will get cash grants for at least a decade By Ben Popper on April 18, 2016 10:07 am Over the last two years Silicon Valley has fallen in love with a striking economic theory. As former Facebook executive Sam Lessin wrote recently, "ThereÂ’s been a dinner-time revival of the old conversation about the inevitable need for a guaranteed basic income in the United States." ItÂ’s ironic that in the heart of winner-take-all venture capital culture, there is a growing call for a massive...

This weekend the Swiss population was called upon to make a historic decision, when Switzerland became the first country worldwide to put the idea of free money for everyone, technically known as Unconditional Basic Income (of CHF2,500 per month for every adult man and woman, and CHF625 for every child, for doing absolutely nothing) to a vote. As reported previously, the outcome of this referendum would set a strong precedent and establish a landmark in the evolution of the debate of handing out free money in a centrally-planned world. And as predicted, based on early vote projections it has been...

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton spent a great deal of time debating the merits of raising the minimum wage at the last Democratic debate on April 14. Sanders, ever the radical, stood behind the popular $15 minimum wage figure that will soon take hold in California and New York. Clinton, who's long pushed for $12, updated her position in support of $15 figure. Both could be misguided. While raising the minimum wage does make sense on paper — working people need to make more to survive than they can on today's minimum wage, so we should give them more money...

The next president will take office as this year’s $544 billion deficit pushes up the U. S. national debt to nearly $20 trillion. Scary, but mere chicken feed compared to the way more than one hundred trillion bucks in unfunded liabilities has already been racked up by our entitlement state. And, on top of that, add our outrageous world policeman fees. The Washington Post reports that, “thanks to various treaties and deals set up since 1945, the U.S. government might be legally obligated to defend countries containing 25 percent of the world’s population.” And boy, has America, World Policeman, been active! The...

First, Friedman from "Free to Choose", Chapter 2, "The Tyranny of Controls" It is often said that bad economic policy reflects disagreement among the experts; that if all economists gave the same advice, economic policy would be good. Economists often do disagree, but that has not been true with respect to international trade. Ever since Adam Smith there has been virtual unanimity among economists, whatever their ideological position on other issues, that international free trade is in the best interest of the trading countries and of the world. Yet tariffs have been the rule. [...] We [the U.S.] should move...

Finland's citizens could soon receive tax-free payouts of roughly $868 a month - just for living in the country. Proposals being drawn up by the Finnish Social Insurance Institution call for a national basic income that would replace other benefit payments, regardless if the recipient is working or not, The Telegraph reports. It's not clear how Finland would shore up enough cash to make the payouts each year, according to Bloomberg. Still, government officials say they're trying to encourage more people to return to work. More than 10 percent of Finland's workforce is unemployed, with figures soaring to 22.7 percent...

What No One Seems to Know About Ted Cruz's Past At the FTC, Cruz's agenda could have been written by Milton Friedman. Cruz promoted economic liberty and fought government efforts to rig the marketplace in favor of special interests. Most notably, Cruz launched an initiative to study the government's role in conspiring with established businesses to suppress e-commerce. This initiative ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to open up an entire industry to small e-tailers. Based on his early support of disruptive online companies, Cruz has some grounds to call himself the "Uber of American politics." Moreover, and perhaps surprising...

When it comes to free trade agreements (FTAs) pending in Congress, Americans have learned not to get their hopes up. No matter what President Obama might say in favor of passing the three FTAs with Panama, Colombia and South Korea; no matter how close congressional leaders are in getting a deal done; and no matter how many times proponents preach the unsurpassed benefits to free trade, something always blocks final passage. So we should take the news that Congress is - once again - close to finishing work on the three FTAs with a heavy dose of skepticism. Nevertheless, Congress...

The Illusion of Free Trade“There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” says Milton Friedman, economist and Noble Prize winner. Nevertheless, Milton Friedman is the most prominent champion of “free” trade and it is difficult to find any economist1 that disagrees. His position is very straight forward: Our market is open to you without tariffs or other restrictions. Sell here what you can and wish to. Buy whatever you can and wish to. In that way cooperation among individuals can be worldwide and free.2 Friedman sees this as way to open markets and at the same time eliminate foreign aid...

The Smoot-Hawley tariff passed in 1931 is the silver bullet of Free Trade advocates. All other arguments do not matter for them because they say the Smoot-Hawley tariffs either were part of the cause of the Great Depression or were responsible for continuing the depression by reducing international trade. This reasoning does not hold up to close inspection. Smoot-Hawley did not cause the Great Depression, nor did it extend the Depression. ... In general, the statistical arguments made by current Free Traders are deceptions. They generally say something like, "the United States economy grew after NAFTA." That may be true,...

Yesterday would have been the 103rd birthday of Milton Friedman, who was one of the most brilliant economists of the last century. In honor of Friedman, here are his 20 best quotes. 20) “A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.” 19) “Because we live in a largely free society, we tend to forget how limited is the span of time and the part of the globe for which there has ever been anything like political freedom: the typical state of mankind is tyranny,...

Dan Joseph is on a mission. Who supports a $50/hour minimum wage? What better place to put forward such a bold initiative than in the free speech zone on the sanctified grounds of George Mason University in Virginia. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Now, while Joseph was able to find a few supporters, some students on campus knew that raising the minimum wage will lead to job losses and increased pricing for some goods. One man called the law racist and he’s not the only one. The late economist Milton Freidman described minimum wage laws as the most anti-African-American law on the books, as he...

A great way to entertain yourself and learn something at the same time is to look up old video of Milton Friedman smacking down liberals. You should be able to find the videos where most of these quotes come from on YouTube.

New York Times columnist David Brooks said Sunday that President Barack Obama has a “manhood problem” in the Middle East. “[L]et’s face it,” he said. “Obama, whether deservedly or not, does have a — I’ll say it crudely, but a manhood problem in the Middle East. Is he tough enough to stand up to somebody like Assad, somebody like Putin?” “I think a lot of the rap is unfair, but certainly in the Middle East, there’s an assumption that he’s not tough,” Brooks added during a roundtable discussion on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

When people speak of a legacy, they usually mean something other than what the late economist Milton Friedman and his wife, Rose, left behind, namely the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice (edchoice.org). The foundation has just released a small book entitled "The ABC's of School Choice: The comprehensive guide to every private school choice program in America." The Friedman philosophy can be summed up in two sentences, which are posted on their web page: "School choice gives parents the freedom to choose their children's education, while encouraging healthy competition among schools to better serve families' needs. School choice lets parents...

The blunt truth about greed and freedom that was delivered over 30 years ago Tuesday, Jan 14, 2014 at 2:19 PM EST On radio this morning, Glenn played a portion of a 1979 interview between Phil Donahue and Milton Friedman, in which Friedman offered a very well-articulated argument in favor of minimizing the role of government in a free market system as a means of creating political and social freedom. It is Friedman’s eloquent delivery of what could be considered a complex theme that Glenn was most concerned with. “[We have to be] more than alert and knowledgeable,” Glenn said....

In the video that you can see by clicking on the "Enza Ferreri Blog" link above, entitled "Incentives for Immoral Behavior", the American economist Professor Milton Friedman explains how there are fundamentally two types of law: those that are regarded as moral and just by the vast majority of people, and those which are not. The former group of laws are generally obeyed because they speak to the inner moral sense of the population, the latter have a high rate of violations. Obviously, the greater the number of laws and regulations, the higher the number of them that will be...

Do you know of any place you can go to find a rational, well-thought out economic argument for liberalism? I can't. And that's really strange considering the degree to which this political philosophy dominates our culture. By the term "liberalism" I mean the intellectual effort to apologize for and defend economic programs primarily associated with Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. There are four main ones: •The substitution of regulation for markets, •The substitution of social insurance for private provision, •The nationalization of welfare, and •The manipulation of the economy by the government. It is difficult to exaggerate how completely this...