One of the core arguments for government expansion is that there is no other way to reliably help the poor to a better life. This false notion has very deep roots, all the way back to the days when the first elements of the welfare state emerged on European soil. Back then, radical liberals convinced social conservatives that collectivized compassi...

I recently reported that some old, ugly and perverted forms of medicine are on their way back into our health care system. While health care as we know it is entirely devoted to curing people and saving their lives, there is a dark side to medicine that has been used for much more sinister purposes. Under Nazi Germany one of those practices, called...

I have often pointed to the errors, systemic and others, in the Wyoming economy. I have repeatedly explained the false sense of job security that comes with a large share of the work force on tax-funded jobs. I have also noted how our largely mono-industrial economy was a big factor in giving Wyoming the nation's slowest private sector growth durin...

Government pension plans promise to pay current and future retirees a benefit based on a defined formula. To make good on its promise, government contributes tax dollars to a pension fund and invests them to generate income. But what happens when contributions and investment returns fall short? Will government raise taxes, cut spending, or reduce t...

You can't make this up: Weed welfare? That's what the Berkeley City Council in California has unanimously approved, ordering medical marijuana dispensaries to donate 2 percent of their stash to patients making less than $32,000 a year. Impressive. A unanimous vote. No doubt a lot of compassionate people on that city council. Well, as the Fox News s...

In Nazi Germany, eugenics was an accepted branch of medicine. Its purpose was to "cleanse" the German people of individuals who were considered genetically less desirable. One would hope that this abhorrent practice would be confined to the dark history of the Third Reich. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Eugenics was well established in Americ...

In 1957, Ford Motor Company rolled out its new brand called Edsel. The ambition for the new brand was to help Ford outgrow General Motors. Reality, though, was different: after three years of disastrous sales Ford shut down the Edsel division. The motive for the decision is obvious: Edsel was losing enormous amounts of money. The verdict of the fre...

Suppose Congress mandated that supermarkets like Wal-Mart must give away groceries to everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. Anyone who wanted to could walk in, demand milk, bread, baked beans and ice cream and then walk out without paying. It would be up to the supermarket to send us a bill and hope we pay it. Needless to say, such a law wo...

Back in July I wrote about the global socialist rebound, part of which involves the emergence of post-Chavez Venezuela. The new president, Nicolas Maduro, has doubled down on socialism and its fatally bad economic model, where daily life is dictated by shortages of everything from bread to electricity. Last year Maduro dictated "fair" pricing on el...

As I explained last week, the American economy is pulling ahead of Europe. One reason is that our welfare state, big and burdensome as it is, is not yet big enough to bring the private sector to a grinding halt. That does not mean we will never pay the price for a growing government. If we continue expanding our welfare state, we will eventually be...