welfare state

The news is filled with the everyday zigzags of those competing against each other for the Democrat and Republican Party nominations to run for the presidency of the United States. But one of the most important issues receiving little or no attention in this circus of political power lusting is the long-term danger from the huge and rising Federal government debt.

We live in an era in which few can even conceive of a world without the welfare state. Who would care for the old? How would people provide for their medical needs? What would happen to the disadvantaged and needy that fell upon hard times? In fact, there were free market solutions and non-government answers to these questions long before the modern Big Government Welfare State.

The Twentieth was the Century of the Welfare State. Governments the world over built and then continuously grew their domestic aid money delivery apparatuses. Tens of trillions of dollars were spent in attempts to raise poor people up and out.

It’s been disastrous.

In the minds of many people around the world, including in the United States, the term “capitalism” carries the idea of unfairness, exploitation, undeserved privilege and power, and immoral profit…

Seventy years ago this month, on March 10, 1944, “The Road to Serfdom” by Friedrich A. Hayek was first published in Great Britain. For seven decades it has continued to challenge and influence the political-economic landscape of the world. Hayek delivered an ominous warning that political trends in the Western democracies, including America, were all in the direction of a new form of servitude that threatened the personal and economic liberty of the citizens of these countries.

Barack Obama is finishing his fifth year as president, and continues to try to move America further in the direction of increased government paternalism with the implementation of ObamaCare, a push for a higher minimum wage, more intrusive business regulation, a drive for higher taxes to redistribute wealth, and a persistent insistence that individuals must sacrifice their own interests for that of “society.”

Detroit was not a victim of the free market, it was built by the free market — but torn down by welfarism, interventionism, and cronyism.

Margaret Thatcher was a new leader who actually understood and could articulate what was wrong with Britain — and had the courage to do something about it.

The story of “Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose” by Dr. Seuss takes place near the fictional Lake Winna-Bango, where a herd of moose line up to graze the moss along the…

Some of us here at The Heartland Institute have been corresponding about the riots in London and what it might mean for the U.S. Sam Karnick, Heartland’s research director, has…