Posted: 28.10.09 19:00. Post subject: Размышления на экономические темы

Очень понравились выдержки из статьи Валтера Вильямса в журнале Импримис http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2009&month=09

О налогах:
A tax, of course, represents a government claim on private property. Every tax confiscates private property that could otherwise be freely spent or freely invested.

...consider that the average American now works from January 1 until May 5 to pay the federal, state, and local taxes required for current government spending levels. Thus the fruits of more than one third of our labor are used in ways decided upon by others. The Founders favored the free market because it maximizes the freedom of all citizens and teaches respect for the rights of others. Expansive government, by contrast, contracts individual freedom and teaches disrespect for the rights of others. Thus clearly we are on what Friedrich Hayek called the road to serfdom, or what I prefer to call the road to tyranny.

О выборных органах:
Speaking of the ballot box, we can blame politicians to some extent for the trampling of our liberty. But the bulk of the blame lies with us voters, because politicians are often doing what we elect them to do. The sad truth is that we elect them for the specific purpose of taking the property of other Americans and giving it to us. Many manufacturers think that the government owes them a protective tariff to keep out foreign goods, resulting in artificially higher prices for consumers. Many farmers think the government owes them a crop subsidy, which raises the price of food. Organized labor thinks government should protect their jobs from non-union competition. And so on. We could even consider many college professors, who love to secure government grants to study poverty and then meet at hotels in Miami during the winter to talk about poor people.

 Posted: 28.10.09 19:03. Post subject: Марк Стейн - о свободах

Мне очень нравятся статьи Марка Стейн, жесткие, прямолинейные https://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2009&month=04

Довоольно красочное описание:
In most of the developed world, the state has gradually annexed all the responsibilities of adulthood—health care, child care, care of the elderly—to the point where it's effectively severed its citizens from humanity's primal instincts, not least the survival instinct.

... Europe's addiction to big government, unaffordable entitlements, cradle-to-grave welfare, and a dependence on mass immigration needed to sustain it has become an existential threat to some of the oldest nation-states in the world.