The state government's pending revenue problems, which I pointed to recently, are now beginning to make real headlines. On Sunday the Casper Star Tribune made its contribution: Dear rest of the country: Spare a thought for oil country. Your cheap gas comes at a cost. The national average gas price hit $2.75 a gallon last week, the lowest price for ...

The latest CREG report predicts that General Fund revenue will grow at a crawling 2.1 percent per year on average from 2016 through 2020. Worse, as Figure 1 shows, the trend for most revenue sources is downward: The Wyoming state government has weathered tough times before, which is one reason why the state has, basically, two years of spending sta...

In an editorial from October 24, the Casper Star Tribune attacks alleged wage discrimination. Citing statistics that women in general earn less than men, the newspaper predictably calls for more government intervention as the universal solution. That solution, says the Tribune, would be "fair schedules and paid sick leave so that workers with care ...

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...