Politics

The Necessary Evil

August 26, 2008

Suggestion – Liberty Magazine The Necessary Evil by Mark Skousen Today libertarians spend most of their time lamenting the consequences of big government. And rightly so. Today government is less a defender of freedom and more a Hobbesian leviathan that undermines prosperity. When we do talk about limited government, it is often seen solely as [...]

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I Led Three Lives

November 1, 2001

November 2001 PERSONAL SNAPSHOTS Forecasts & Strategies by Mark Skousen “It was a time for every man to stir.” — Thomas Paine Westchester County, New York, where I now reside, is full of American heroes. Two are buried in Sleepy Hollow cemetery — Carnegie, the steel magnate (highlighted last month) and Samuel Gompers, the great [...]

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Neither Left nor Right

July 5, 2000

Economics on Trial – Ideas on Liberty – July 2000 by Mark Skousen “Those who control the adjectives win.” — Larry Abraham The use of the political labels “left” and “right” may be popular in today’s media, but there are several reasons why the dichotomy is a false and misleading guide to political and economic [...]

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Too Many Free-Market Think Tanks?

May 28, 2000

Personal Snapshots FORECASTS & STRATEGIES May 2000 by Mark Skousen “Stimulating independent thought… is being done by all too few individuals and institutions, not only in the U.K. but here in the U.S. as well.” — Milton Friedman (1981) Donating money to a few of my favorite free-market organizations used to be a pleasant duty, [...]

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Chicago Gun Show

October 5, 1999

Economics on Trial The Freeman OCTOBER 1999 by Mark Skousen “According to the economic approach, criminals, like everyone else, respond to incentives.” -GARY BECKER(1) The Chicago boys are at it again. This time the economists at the University of Chicago are making headlines in today’s hotly disputed debate about gun control. Milton Friedman set the [...]

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No More Political Labels, Please

July 5, 1999

LIBERTY Magazine By Mark Skousen A rose is a rose is a rose. But a conservative is a libertarian is a liberal. When labels confuse rather than clarify, they should be dropped. RESOLVED: That we use political labels as little as possible when describing people’s ideologies. When somebody asks me, “Are you a liberal? Conservative? [...]

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Keynesianism Defeated

October 9, 1997

WALL STREET JOURNAL — THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1997 By Mark Skousen In 1992, Harvard Prof. Greg Mankiw was paid an unprecedented advance of $1.1 million to produce the “next Salmuelson”–a successor to Paul Samuelson’s “Economics,” the most successful economics textbook ever written, with more than four million copies sold in 15 editions and 41 foreign [...]

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