With Venezuela's Oil, Trump Is Doing Exactly As Conservatives Desire
Donald Trump is doing exactly as modern conservatives should want him to do in Venezuela. Which speaks to how much conservatism has changed. To see why, pivot to Hong Kong.
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Essays
Writing by John Tamny and Parkview contributors, from the latest commentary to the collected archive.
39 essays · Newest first
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Balanced Budget Hagiography Plays Into the Hands of Big Government
Ed Crane, the late co-founder of the Cato Institute, was not a fan of “across the board spending cuts.” And that’s not because Crane favored big government. Crane very much disdained the notion…
There’s Nothing “Optimistic” About San Francisco Balancing Its Budget
It’s accepted wisdom in San Francisco that the path to successfully purchasing an apartment is an opening bid of 50% over asking price. It’s worth remembering as the right-leaning California Post…
Bill Archer’s Death Is Reminder That Spending Cuts Won’t Shrink Government
Spending cuts will not shrink the federal government. When politicians promise the opposite, they’re not telling the truth. “We must stop measuring compassion by the amount of money the government…
The Much Bigger Government In Rand Paul’s “Six Penny” Budget Plan
Since it ignores why we have deficits and debt in the first place, a balanced budget rule would vastly expand the size of the federal government. To understand why, we need only contemplate the…
All Government Spending Is Painful, and Paid for Right Now
Economic thought with any pretense of seriousness is all about removing all barriers to production. No doubt taxes are a barrier, as are regulations, tariffs, currency devaluation, and government…
Neither Balanced Budgets Nor ‘Starve the Beast’ Will Limit Government
Balancing the budget will never, ever shrink the federal government opposite what the experts at Cato, Mercatus, and other right-of-center think tanks tell you. The reason why can yet again be found…
Defense Spending, and the 5% of GDP Fallacy
The idea that defense spending should somehow be a consistent percentage of GDP is as fallacious as it is wasteful. Consider a recent Washington Post editorial. It oddly asserted that “Throughout the…
Thomas Massie Is Right About Government Spending For the Wrong Reasons
Government spending is by far the biggest, most freedom and economy-sapping tax of all. While Larry Ellison, Elon Musk and Reed Hastings will work at all sorts of tax rates, they can’t innovate…
The Size of Government Will Sadly Soar With a “Balanced Budget”
A balanced federal budget in the United States is consistent with a massively bloated government operating well beyond its constitutional limits. This is what the budgetary experts at libertarian and…
Stop the Looting, Slash the Spending, Starve the Machine
The cannons roared. The soldiers charged. Hurrah! The soldiers died. We threw dirt clods at one another; pinecones were hand grenades. We pretended they were the Germans, and they pretended…
Peter Bauer Would Understand the Danger of Balanced Budgets
Balanced budget orthodoxy in the United States will keep the poorest parts of the U.S. relatively impoverished. And not because of reduced federal spending. Quite the opposite. Peter Bauer…
Fintechs Don’t Require Government Handouts for Data Access
Back when Google first launched its email service, “Gmail” was free for users, and the platform was monetized primarily through ads. However, as the platform grew in its success, so did the amount of…
$37 Trillion: The Screaming Tell About the Futility of Budgetary Balance
“Those of us who call ourselves Republicans have a choice to make: We can choose to stand for our historic principles, or we can continue on the road to angry populism.” Those are the words of former…
Falling Inflation Predicts Rising Government Spending and Debt
Total federal debt was $620 billion in 1976. Why 1976? In a recent column, Holman Jenkins referenced Jimmy Carter’s contention in a 1976 debate that “The best way to control inflation is to cut down…
Robert Moses Showed That Spending Cuts Just Feed the Spenders
No act of federal spending restraint will ever shrink the federal government. That’s because spending cuts ignore what’s enabling the relentless growth of federal government: humongous federal tax…
$37 Trillion Debt Vivifies the Perils of Future Budgetary Balance
“Washington’s spiraling debt trends are simply unsustainable.” Those are the words of Manhattan Institute budget expert Jessica Riedl in the Washington Post. But unless Riedl knows something that the…
Why a Balanced Budget Is the True Immoral Burden for the “Grandkids”
What’s the bigger generational burden: small amounts of annual borrowing to pay for small governmental overages in a nation full of 20 percent taxed middle earners (governments can’t borrow…
Taxation Is Easily the Least Harmful Aspect of Government Spending
Taxes are routinely awful, and annually unearth dread in all of us as we cower before Congress’s outsourced tax collector (the IRS). We do so while trying to grasp the meaning of a tax code that…
“Balanced Budgets”: One of the Most Fraudulent Notions In Economics
“Balanced budgets” have nothing to do with limited government. Neither does a budget surplus. As with most notions crafted by economists and the budgetary scolds they’ve long enabled, the notion of…
Spending Cuts Won’t Shrink Government, and May Well Expand It
It’s easy to forget that individual saving in no way shrinks consumption. Short of placing money saved into a coffee can, to save is to shift consumptive ability to someone else. What’s true about…
Opposite Peter Orszag and His Opposites, Government Spending Doesn’t Cause Inflation
Do you prefer to lend to those who will pay you back? No need to answer. As repeated with great regularity in my upcoming book, The Deficit Delusion, money is ruthless. It must be since the genius of…
What Davy Crockett Would Say About Government Spending
When my boy Coleman was four, he asked for — and got — a Davy Crockett jacket and a coonskin cap for Christmas. Back when Disney celebrated bad asses instead of fruitcakes, he…
Tariffs Are Awful, Gov’t Spending Is Worse. Neither Is Inflation
The Fed is tasked with fighting inflation that neither it nor Congress understands. See the accepted view among politicians, economists and pundits that if the Fed centrally plans low, but…