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 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...

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...

There are many unanswered questions in our universe: Is there life on other planets?Do intelligent beings on other planets pay taxes?When is government big enough for a statist? The first two questions are easy to answer. Yes, of course there is life on other planets. Anything else would be statistically impossible. As for intelligent aliens and ta...

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...

The issue of legalized marijuana is slowly carving out a spot for itself on the Wyoming political scene. In January the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, seductively abbreviated NORML, submitted a proposal for a 2016 ballot initiative in Wyoming, seeking to: make it legal for anyone 21 or older to use marijuana;allow medical use a...

There are many myths regarding public policy. Those myths are particularly prevalent among people who purport to do economic research. One of those myths says that when you study Wyoming taxes you have to remove severance taxes from the equation because Wyoming is so exceptionally dependent on those; severance taxes, it is said, make Wyoming look l...