The government is really bad at predicting the future. Bureaucrats do not face the same incentives as the most successful forecasters of wealth (who, by the way, are allowed to go under when they fail). So why do we expect the government to predict the future of our infrastructure needs?
While hard-line Remainers are convinced that people in poorer areas were somehow conned into voting against their own interests, Cornwall, the UK’s largest recipient of EU regional development funds, was widely mocked for voting Leave and then requesting reassurance that Westminster would fill the funding gap. As Cornish voters have clearly been aware, however, the money the EU has seen fit to spend in Britain is less than the amount the UK sends to the EU in the first place.
Much of the capital’s prosperity is the result of coercive redistribution. The lavish compensation of federal bureaucrats is a direct transfer from taxpayers to a gilded class, while the various lobbyists, contractors, cronyists, politicians, and other insiders are fat and happy because of a combination of direct and indirect redistribution.
"The 115th Congress has offered the American people: a 'moderate' $1.1 trillion budget with an increase in war spending for the GOP and an untouched welfare state for the Democrats."
If Trump really wanted a big tax cut, he would have a comprehensive plan to restrain the growth of government spending. He doesn’t. If Trump genuinely wanted lower taxes, he would be aggressively pushing for genuine entitlement reform. He isn’t.
The homilies you hear every day now on the danger of the debt and deficit – and why the US must never cut taxes for fear of increasing them – are mostly political rhetoric designed to perpetuate the ongoing pillaging of the American taxpayer. The way to restrain debt accumulation is through spending control, and the way to impose that is through market discipline under real-world conditions.
Many American states have made unaffordable and unfunded promises to give lavish benefits to retired bureaucrats. Rather than talking about America's prospects of ending up like Greece, we should be learning a lesson from Brazil.
Why does government hate the gold standard … or any real standard for that matter? At the heart of government’s attack on gold, silver, bitcoin, and other commodity standards is an outright hatred for accountability and private property, and a real love for theft.
Maybe, just maybe, the data are so depressing that both the electorate and politicians will wake up and realize something needs to change.
In the United States, transit projects are chronically expensive and time-consuming. With the collapse of Highway I-85 in Atlanta, Georgia, and the nation’s Highway Trust Fund rapidly approaching insolvency, when are we going to admit that our approach to infrastructure simply does not work?
