The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced last week that for the first time, the number of government employees in unions exceeded the number in the private sector, which fell to a new low of 7.2 percent, down from 7.6 percent in 2008. At the same time the number of government employees in unions rose from 36.8 percent to 37.4 percent.

But private sector union membership has been on a slow and steady decline for decades. While union leaders decry the numbers, saying that good union jobs are disappearing, the reality behind unions is much more complex. To an extent, they have become a victim of their own success.

The AFL-CIO, the largest union federation in the U.S., claims on its Web site that unions help “build stronger workplaces” and “give workers a voice on the job about safety, security, pay, benefits — and about the best ways to get the work done.” Further, it says, unions “represent working families before lawmakers, and make sure politicians never forget that working families voted them into office.”

All of that, it turns out, is somewhere between misleading and blatantly untrue.

“They artificially increase wages in unionized industries, limit employment opportunities, depress wages in nonunion jobs, lower rates of return on investment in unionized firms, and slow the growth of productivity,” writes James A. Dorn, professor of economics at Towson University and editor of theCato Journal. “Unions politicize labor markets and have used the threat of violence to protect their wage premiums. In addition to using their monopoly power to secure higher than market wages, unions spend huge sums of money to maintain their power and limit competition.”

In its first issue of 2010,Cato Journal asks, Are unions good for America? The answer may surprise you, especially if you are a member of a union.

(Before going on I should disclose that I once paid union dues to the United Food and Commercial Workers when I worked at a grocery store.)

In 232 short pages of hard-hitting analysis, (but don’t do what I did and read it all in one sitting) Cato exposes some of the myths behind labor unions that practically everyone believes. Here are a few of them.

Myth: Unions work to ensure a level playing field for employees.

Fact: Unions advocate for laws which tilt the playing field in ways that are unfair to both employers and employees. Those laws often impair economic growth and innovation, as well as destroy the freedom to contract, according to Randall G. Holcombe and James D. Gwartney, economics professors at Florida State University. Over time, these labor laws actually cause a shift in employment from union jobs to nonunion jobs. In fact, research shows that the growth of labor unions during the Great Depression actually increased unemployment. Unions are still destroying jobs today.

“In the short run, because labor law has given to unions an advantage in the bargaining process, union contracts have had the effect of increasing the wages and benefits of union workers,” they wrote. “In the long run, the higher cost of union labor brought on by those union contracts has resulted in a steady decline in private sector unionism, and has eroded U.S. manufacturing in unionized industries — most visibly, the railroad and auto industries.”

Myth: Unions bargain on behalf of their members to get employees the wages and benefits they deserve.

Fact: Unions “bargain” with the guns of government in hand, to get employees more wages and benefits than they deserve, with a little for themselves on the side. By crawling in bed with government to pass laws which benefited the unions at the expense of employers — and, in the long run, employees — union leaders have drained American businesses dry. The long, slow decline of private sector unions reflects the economic destruction they left in their wake as they searched for fresh blood to leech. And today they’ve found the biggest source yet, the government.

Armand Thieblot, an economic consultant who has written books on union corruption and violence, writes:

When Samuel Gompers, then head of the American Federation of Labor, was asked in the early 1920s what unions wanted, he famously replied, “More.” At the time, everyone correctly understood that unions’ targets were the capitalists from whom additional wages and benefits would be wrested by force, and also that if unions were successful, capitalists would have to be content with “Less,” thus, just a transfer of economic rents within the system from one factor to another.

By the 1980s and 1990s, however, when unorganized capitalists had become thin on the ground and those already organized had mostly been rendered uncompetitive by past concession to union demands, unions’ new guiding trope became “More government.” To achieve it, unions became mordantly political. In economic terms, after unions had absorbed all of the readily available economic rents from their capitalist opponents, they have turned to seeking rents from new sources beyond the system — from the polity at large (from taxpayers), using government as the intermediary.

Myth: Project labor agreements reduce project costs and delays and are good for construction workers as a whole.

Fact: Project labor agreements increase costs and only help union workers. PLAs are agreements between construction project owners and unions that contractors on the project must use union labor, even if they otherwise would not. David G. Tuerck, economics professor and chair at Suffolk University, cites numerous examples of how nonunion workers were harmed when they worked under PLAs, “first by forcing them to pay twice for benefits already offered their workers and second by forcing pay cuts on their workers.” Then, unions use veiled threats to “labor peace” to intimidate project owners into accepting PLAs for “job stability.” Further, PLAs increased costs for every project studied which used them, sometimes as much as 20 percent.

“PLAs are motivated by a desire on the part of the construction unions to shore up the declining union wage premium against technological changes and other changes that make traditional union work rules and job designations obsolescent,” Tuerck writes. “Now the PLA has evolved into an instrument that the unions employ in tandem with the prevailing wage laws in order to reduce the competitive advantage of nonunion contractors.”

Myth: Prevailing wage laws are good for competition, improve safety and quality, and help train new workers.

Fact: Prevailing wage laws stifle competition, have no effect on job safety and quality, and do nothing to help train new workers. The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, signed into law by President Herbert Hoover, mandates that on federal construction projects, workers be paid the so-called “prevailing wage” for similar local workers. In practice, the wage is set far higher than the actual prevailing wage, closely mirroring union pay scales. This virtually locks out nonunion construction workers from federal contracts.

George C. Leef, director of the Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, finds that all of the arguments for prevailing wage laws fail to stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. Worse, the Davis-Bacon Act was racially motivated: “The hearings and debate on the legislation revealed some ugly racial overtones with comments on how ‘cheap colored labor’ was driving down wages of white workers.” Robert Bacon originally proposed the bill because he was upset that a construction firm from outside his district, employing black workers, built a veterans’ hospital in his district.

Myth: Organized labor has worked to promote racial equality.

Fact: Unions have used racial discrimination as a tool to enrich themselves, and continue to do so today. In 2008, Richard Trumka, who is now the president of the AFL-CIO, said, “We know, better than anyone else, how racism is used to divide working people.” He should, because the unions have been doing it for their entire existence, and still are, as Paul Moreno, history professor at Hillsdale College, illustrates. It isn’t — and probably never was — the employers oppressing the black, or the Chinese, or the Hispanic people. Most employers, as it turns out, really are color blind, as Martin Luther King, Jr., noted in 1957: “With the growth of industry the folkways of white supremacy will necessarily pass away. Moreover, southerners are learning to be good businessmen, and as such realize that bigotry is costly and bad for business.”

As racism goes, unions made the KKK look like amateurs. Big Labor lobbied for, and got, special laws to make them completely immune for whatever they did — all the way up to outright murder. InUnited States v. Enmons, in 1973, the Supreme Court held that unions were immune from prosecution under the Hobbs Act if their violent acts were in furtherance of a “valid union objective.”

Moreno concludes:

The problem of racial discrimination in organized labor in America was less solved than it was outgrown. The story of racial discrimination in the American labor movement confirms the view that unions act as cartels that attempt to limit the supply of labor and raise its price. An easily identified and culturally disfavored minority group provided a convenient category for exclusion. But most unions were unable to succeed without state power, and by the time that they acquired such power, blacks had already fought their way into the industrial workforce. Discrimination within, rather than exclusion from, unions then became the chief problem — one that spawned the policy of “affirmative action.” Finally, the macroeconomic costs of unions decimated the ranks of private sector unions.

And Trumka? He talked a good game about ending racism in organized labor, but whether anything will change remains to be seen.

Myth: Unions help preserve manufacturing jobs.

Fact: Unions were a contributing factor in the decline of American manufacturing, especially in the automobile industry. Detroit makes a great example. At the start of the 20th century, Detroit was a boom town and its manufacturing jobs were paying 33 percent above the national average. Union organizers brought their message of capitalist greed and exploitation to already highly paid auto workers, where it largely fell on deaf ears. Until the Great Depression, when union organizers used a variety of underhanded tactics to force automakers, steel plants and other manufacturers to unionize.

(Interestingly, Henry Ford at the time threatened to break up his company rather than submit to union demands; he finally gave in when his wife threatened to leave him.)

Stephen J.K. Walters, economics professor at Loyola, explains what happened next. Companies, squeezed hard and struggling to survive, would move their operations out of Detroit and other cities, and later, out of the country entirely.

In sum, at the onset of World War II most of America’s great industrial firms — which, thanks to agglomeration economies were concentrated in cities throughout the East and upper Midwest — now faced labor cartels. These cartels needed some time to consolidate their power, so increases in employers’ wage costs would be significant but gradual. Further, WWII and its aftermath, during which time America’s industrial rivals’ productive capacity suffered heavy damage that would be restored only slowly, insulated the unions and firms to some degree and for some time from the most severe competitive consequences of monopolistic and opportunistic prices for labor. But the employers started to adapt immediately in ways that standard economic theory would predict — and that would ultimately help create what became known as America’s Rust Belt. Union actions, clearly, were not the only reason that industrial cities would decapitalize, depopulate, and become poorer in the second half of the 20th century, but they merit inclusion on the list.

If you’ve lost a manufacturing job any time in the last 50 years, thank your union boss for destroying your job, with a one-finger salute.

Myth: Teachers’ unions work to increase the quality of children’s education.

Fact: Teachers’ unions work to increase their membership rolls and their political power, at the expense of your children’s education. While collective bargaining has done little to increase the salaries of union public school teachers over nonunion public school teachers, these unions perform a different service for their members: preventing them from having to educate children. Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute, explains that teachers’ unions strongly oppose government reforms which would improve the quality of K-12 education, such as charter schools, vouchers, and property tax credits.

The NEA and AFT spend large sums on political lobbying so that public school districts maintain their monopoly control of more than half a trillion dollars in annual U.S. K-12 education spending. That monopoly, in turn, offers a more than 40 percent average compensation premium over the private sector, along with greater job security. And since both the U.S. and international research indicate that achievement and efficiency are generally higher in private sector — and particularly competitive market — education systems, the public school monopoly imposes an enormous cost on American children and taxpayers. We are paying dearly for the union label, but mainly due to union lobbying to preserve the government school monopoly rather than to collective bargaining. (Emphasis in original)

Myth: Public sector unions work for the general prosperity of their members and all Americans.

Fact: Public sector unions dramatically increase the cost of government to unsustainable levels. The cost of employee wages and benefits accounts for half of the $2.2 trillion that state and local governments spent in 2008, and that number is set to grow dramatically as employees retire and generous pension packages kick in. Though, calling them generous is an understatement.

Moreover, according to Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, those pension obligations are grossly underfunded, which will make the fiscal crisis even more acute this decade.

The upshot of all this is that policymakers will need to make large budget reforms in the years ahead. They will to need to deliver public services more efficiently, to privatize services when feasible, to cut staffing levels, and to terminate low-value programs. Policymakers often hesitate in making such reforms, but the high level of unionization in many state workforces will make reforms even harder to achieve. During labor negotiations, for example, public officials often succumb to pressure to make short-term concessions that end up damaging public finances in the long run.

Businesses can and do mitigate the inefficiencies of a unionized workplace, but governments are much more constrained and have less incentive to do so, driving up taxpayer costs even further. And public sector unions use their large war chests to buy influence and protection. “So the problem with public sector unions is not just that they block compensation reforms, but that use their privileged status to control broader policy debates.”

Myth: Right-to-work laws harm employees and prevent employers from freely contracting with unions.

Fact: Right-to-work laws improve the economy, and employers freely contracting with unions is prohibited by the Wagner Act. That Act forces employers to bargain with unions “in good faith,” which is interpreted to mean that employers must capitulate to virtually every demand of the unions or be accused of acting in bad faith. This is hardly freedom of contract. Right-to-work laws mitigate, but do not entirely fix, this problem.

I have some experience with this, since I once worked in a non-right-to-work state and was forced to join the union. I would rather have negotiated my own terms; I’d likely have gotten a better deal. It seems many Americans agree, as millions of them have moved from non-right-to-work states to right-to-work states in the last decade, a migration that shows no signs of stopping. Richard Vedder, economics professor at Ohio University, found that both predictive models and real world evidence show that right-to-work states experience more economic growth than non-right-to-work states.

Myth: Labor unions support trade liberalization because it lowers the prices of goods that workers buy.

Fact: This used to be true, but today’s labor unions oppose trade liberalization. They believe that increasing globalization has directly led to the decline of their unions, and thus their power. This isn’t exactly true, according to Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. “Although the evidence is lacking to implicate globalization as a whole, two aspects of the trend have been found to have significant negative effects on labor unions: inward foreign direct investment (FDI), and ’social integration’ across borders.”

When foreign companies invest in the U.S., companies here realize that they can also invest in other countries. “The correlation of FDI and declining rates of union density suggests that ‘many workers feel greater insecurity from seeing capital mobility in their sectors, even if not in their own particular firms,’ Slaughter (2007: 344–45) concluded.”

And social globalization, “the spread of ideas, information, images and people,” a natural result of advances in communications and transportation, “reinforces what Dresher and Gaston (2007: 176) call a ‘growing normative orientation towards individuals rather than collectivism [which] makes collective organization more difficult.’ Adding to the trends are rising levels of immigration and perceptions of younger workers who view unions as old-fashioned and anachronistic institutions.”

In competitive product markets, the drag that unions impose on firm performance can be debilitating to the firm and its workers over time. As described above, firms facing vigorous competition are not able to pass along higher costs to consumers without risk of losing significant market share. Newly unionized firms in such markets face the cruel choice of passing along higher labor costs to consumers, thus losing market share to more cost-efficient competitors, or eating the higher costs in the form of lower profits and less reinvestment in physical and intellectual capital. Either choice will result over time in an erosion of the unionized firm’s market share.

Myth: Paying workers higher wages will reduce unemployment and stimulate the economy.

Fact: The “high-wage doctrine” increases unemployment and drags down the economy. This doctrine originated with a 1921 report that Hoover commissioned while he was Secretary of Commerce dealing with what was, in retrospect, a minor recession. In addition to recommending higher wages, the report also said that government spending (now known as the stimulus package) can help the country recover from a recession. Neither is true, of course, and the report might have been completely forgotten had Hoover not become President. He put his disastrous ideas into practice, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Worse, proponents of these theories, which John Maynard Keynes gleefully signed on to, are more concerned with theories than facts, according to Lowell E. Gallaway, economics professor at Ohio University. That’s just a polite way of saying they’re full of crap. Galloway writes:

In the intellectual world, the high-wage doctrine continues to have its appeal. Prior to his appointment as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Ben Bernanke, collaborating with Martin Parkinson, noted: “Maybe Herbert Hoover and Henry Ford were right. Higher real wages may have paid for themselves in the broader sense that their positive effect on aggregate demand compensated for their tendency to raise costs” (Bernanke and Parkinson 1989: 214). More recently, Paul Krugman reiterated this view in a New York Times oped (3 May 2009), arguing, “Many workers are accepting pay cuts in order to save jobs.” He then asks, “What’s wrong with that?” His answer refers to what he calls “one of those paradoxes that plague our economy right now . . . workers at any one company can help save their jobs by accepting lower wages, but when employers across the economy cut wages at the same time, the result is higher unemployment.” This is simply a reprise of Klein’s (1947) views. Never mind the existence of more than a century of empirical evidence to the contrary. Krugman’s concern is not with the empirical problem, but with the theoretical connection between wage rates and employment. The high-wage doctrine still lives. In all probability, this persistent adherence to an incorrect doctrine once again will prove to be detrimental to the U.S. economy, just as it was in the 1930s.

Myth: Unions currently operate in a free market.

Fact: Unions are heavily dependent on the government to provide them unfair leverage over employers and control over their members. It is possible for unions to exist and provide valuable services to their members in a market free of government-sponsored violence and control, but those services would likely have to be geared toward helping employees improve themselves, rather than extracting undeserved compensation from employers.

Charles W. Baird, professor emeritus of economics at California State University, East Bay, examines what constitutes a free market, how existing labor laws destroy freedom, and what a union might look like in a true free market. It won’t happen any time soon, though, he says: “It is politically impossible, at this time in America, to repeal the Norris-LaGuardia Act and the National Labor Relations Act and replace them with any sort of free-market union law. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to prepare the ground now for doing so in some future, more enlightened time.”

If you’re wondering why you’re out of a job, why Detroit is a wasteland, and why the economy is on the verge of collapse, don’t be so quick to blame Wall Street: Some of the blame belongs to the labor unions.

["AFL-CIO building, Washington, D.C." photo by Derek Blackadder; CC BY-SA 2.0]

With literally nothing to show for the $100 billion it has wasted so far, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wants even more money to “strengthen” Head Start, a preschool program its own study finds is a failure.

The study, which was ordered by Congress in 1998 and finally released Wednesday, showed that by the first grade, any advantages children had received from Head Start had vanished.

“Research clearly shows that Head Start positively impacts the school readiness of low-income children,” HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a statement. “Now we must increase its effectiveness and continue to provide the support that our children, from birth to eight, need to prepare to succeed later in school and in life.”

That news release revealed part of the truth: “The study showed that at the end of one program year, access to Head Start positively influenced children’s school readiness. When measured again at the end of kindergarten and first grade, however, the Head Start children and the control group children were at the same level on many of the measures studied.”

The rest of the story was in footnote 99, buried over halfway through the 420-page report.

“A certain number of apparently significant results are to be expected merely by chance, and the probability of these false positives grows in proportion to the number of tests you report,” explained Andrew Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute. Applying any of a number of statistical correction methods, he said, causes the results to be correctly read as statistically insignificant at best, and at worst, “these marginal results would be savagely beaten, buried in concrete, and dropped into the Mariana Trench.”

“These results make it clear that we need to build a more coordinated system of early care and education, and to focus on key improvements to teaching and learning in the early grades,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in the same statement.

“There are other government education programs whose effects actually grow substantially over time, and that are comparatively economical,” Coulson wrote, such as the Washington, D.C., school voucher program, in which students showed significant educational gains over those not in the program, and at a quarter of the cost of a student who remained in a public school. Congress refused to reauthorize the program.

“Will they now redirect their efforts to the support of programs whose benefits for disadvantaged children actually grow in magnitude the longer kids stay in school, or will they continue to push for programs like Head Start that have been proven costly failures?”

Three guesses on that one.

Clearly the powers that be want children in government schools, whatever the cost, and even if the children would be better served by a program proven less expensive with better results. Even if the bureaucrats have no ulterior motives, which isn’t terribly likely, this isn’t good for your children, and alone is enough to justify removing them from public school any way you can.

Not only aren’t your children learning much of anything in public school, they may well be in mortal danger, thanks in part to the attitudes and beliefs of their teachers and school administrators.

I was recently sent a letter from a high school teacher published in the December 28Boston Globe. In the letter, Brockton High School math teacher Doug Van Gorder, who lives in nearby Quincy, perfectly illustrates the so-called “progressive” ideology.

In case you’re tempted to believe this letter is satire, a local newspaper called him for comment and got only this: “The letter speaks for itself.”

Brockton High School was the site of a December 2 shooting which left a non-student injured. Last week another teenager was shot in the city’s Westgate Mall.

The school district is defending this teacher’s right to free speech, and I would do the same. Even the insane have a right to speech, I think. However, combined with comments from a local discussion board on this teacher’s classroom antics, a psychiatric evaluation seems in order.

It doesn’t really matter who wrote the letter, though. It captures the “progressive” ideology quite well, though it is perhaps best understood as a caricature. For a long time I didn’t believe it was possible for someone to hold such beliefs. Now I merely don’t believe it is possible for any sane person to hold beliefs such as those expressed in this letter:

I am a math teacher at Brockton High School, the site of a school shooting earlier this month.

Current school security procedures lock down school populations in the event of armed assault. Some advocate abandoning this practice as it holds everyone in place, allowing a shooter easily to find victims.

An alternative to lockdown is immediate exodus via announcement. Although this removes potential hostages and makes it nearly impossible for the shooter to acquire preselected targets, it unfairly rewards resourceful children who move to safety off-site more shrewdly and efficiently than others.

Schools should level playing fields, not intrinsically reward those more resourceful. A level barrel is fair to all fish.

Some propose overturning laws that made schools gun-free zones even for teachers who may be licensed to securely carry concealed firearms elsewhere. They argue that barring licensed-carry only ensures a defenseless, target-rich environment.

But as a progressive, I would sooner lay my child to rest than succumb to the belief that the use of a gun for self-defense is somehow not in itself a gun crime. — Boston Globe

This is not the sort of person any sane parent would want within ten miles of their children, let alone teaching them, yet every public school in America has teachers who hold similar views. Worse, they are the majority, and they are reinforced in their anti-child views by their unions.

First, teachers and school administrators really do believe that your children should be held back when they get too far ahead. If you complain too loudly, they will get shunted into a so-called “gifted and talented” program where they can be held back without “disrupting the class” with their constant need to do something more challenging, useful or important.

Leveling the playing field, in the eyes of public school teachers and administrators, has become making sure as little actual educational achievement occurs as possible without parents noticing until it’s too late.

Finally, as difficult as it is to believe, many people really do believe it’s better to die than to defend yourself. This is quite a bit different than the otherwise admirable philosophy of pacifism; in this case, they believe in and celebrate violence, especially when it is done by their group to members of other groups. Teachers and administrators holding this philosophy of death will not shed a single true tear when your child gets killed in the next school shooting, and while they talk about reducing school violence, will do everything they can to ensure that there is a next school shooting.

These individuals are truly disturbed and rarely get the psychiatric help they need. If your child’s teacher makes statements like those in this letter, you may be dealing with such an individual. In any case, they are so common in schools today that you will have to search hard to find a teacher who doesn’t subscribe to this philosophy of keeping your children ignorant and possibly getting them killed.

As always, I suggest looking anywhere but a public school if you want your child to actually have an education.

["Adolf Hitler Target" photo by Marshall Astor; CC BY-SA 2.0]

The Conspiracy is proud to present another in our series of productions designed to study the fallacies underlying arguments for government-run education. Here, we talk to Sam Blumenfeld, the legendary critic of state controlled education, and the man who predicted that the look-say method of teaching reading would produce millions of illiterate American children.

If you have kids, or plan on it — if you believe in freedom, this will be a valuable production! Spread the word.

Be seeing you!

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Imagine being a child who takes peppermint into school — and is suspended for it and told he or she engaged in “wrongdoing.” Imagine being a parent who has his or her money forced from him in order to perpetuate this school system, and can get little if any satisfaction in changing the bad system.

Now imagine that this school system has been dumbing down American kids for decades.

Imagine someone speaking out against it.

That’s why we’re in the Conspiracy.

Be Seeing You at www.libertyconspiracy.com

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is buying beef and chicken to serve to your children in public school that fast-food chains reject as poor quality or even unsafe.

An investigation by USA TODAY found that quality and safety standards used by fast food chains were much more stringent than those the government uses.

For instance, the USDA supplied schools with old, rejected chickens which would have otherwise been used as pet food or compost. KFC refuses to buy these so-called “spent hens,” which are too old to lay eggs, and Campbell’s Soup cites quality as its reason for rejecting them. But your kids are eating them in school.

“Mature hens must comply with the same safety standards as any other chicken processed and sold to consumers,” Rayne Pegg, head of the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, told USA TODAY. But a 2002 Washington State University study found that spent hens were four times more likely to be contaminated with salmonella.

It found that McDonald’s, Burger King, and retail outlets like Costco tested their meat five to 10 times more often than the government, and that fast food standards for potentially harmful bacteria were up to 10 times more stringent than government standards for school lunches.

“We simply are not giving our kids in schools the same level of quality and safety as you get when you go to many fast-food restaurants,” says J. Glenn Morris, professor of medicine and director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida. “We are not using those same standards.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In 2000, then-Agriculture secretary Dan Glickman directed the USDA to adopt “the highest standards” for school meat. He cited concerns that fast-food chains had tougher safety and quality requirements than those set by the USDA for schools, and he vowed that “the disparity would exist no more.”

Today, USDA rules for meat sent to schools remain more stringent than the department’s minimum safety requirements for meat sold at supermarkets. But those government rules have fallen behind the increasingly tough standards that have evolved among fast-food chains and more selective retailers. — USA TODAY

“Companies that have to attract and keep customers to stay in business have a huge incentive to avoid such things as, you know, sending their customers to the hospital,” wrote Neal McCluskey, associate director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. “Not so government bureaucrats or educationists, who are getting your tax dollars no matter what.”

A USA TODAY analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data found that between 1998 and 2007, over 470 outbreaks of food-borne illness sickened at least 23,000 school children.

Now some government bureaucrats want to copy the fast food chains’ testing requirements. “Our children deserve a testing program at least as good as the fast food chains,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) wrote in a letter to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. Gillibrand also asked for the USDA “to terminate contracts with any habitual violators of your food safety policies.” Vilsack said that the department would conduct a review, but didn’t promise anything.

One of those “habitual violators” was Beef Packers of Fresno, Calif., which supplied 450,000 pounds of ground beef to the government for public schools last summer. Beef Packers had to recall another 826,000 pounds at the time for salmonella contamination. After a second recall last week where two people in Arizona fell ill, some members of Congress want Beef Packers closed.

Maybe we need corporations to save us from evil government, rather than the reverse. It’s clear that the government is incapable on its own of assuring food safety. Or, as McCluskey says, “How many more children have to get E. coli before we allow freedom in education?”

["School Lunch" photo by Ishikawa Ken; CC BY-SA 2.0]

In this special reissue of Gardner Goldsmith’s extensive essay on the dangers of government, he explains why even Thomas Jefferson overlooked some of the inherent contradictions inherent in the “small government” concept of Locke. Please enjoy this, part two of Gard’s discussion of fundamental principles. It will serve as a bulwark against statists of all kinds.

Be Seeing You!

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

After years of writing about how governments abuse, murder, and imprison innocent people and destroy life around the world, I find that I have been wrong, really wrong. All this time, I wrongfully tried to convince readers that terrible things are done in the name of “good government,” and now I have to apologize to them.

Why this turnaround? I have seen the light. Government is good, yes, very, very good. How do I know this? Why Douglas J. Amy, a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts (an island of True Political Correctness in America’s Most Politically-Correct State) has opened a world of Truth and Beauty to me with his website, Government Is Good.

You see, until I read this wonderful site praising the Great Accomplishments and Missions of Government (or at least government when run by the Democratic Party), I had no idea that government constantly did wonderful things for me. I was ungrateful, but no more!

For example, did you know that if it were not for government, your house would burn down if you turned on the lights, as those wicked, profit-seeking homebuilders and electricians would wire your house in a sloppy manner that immediately would start a conflagration that would kill you and your family? (As I read this site, I realize that the world is divided into two kinds of people. The first category includes those who run private businesses in order to cheat and kill you, and the second category includes those selfless government workers who tirelessly labor to keep those other evil people from harming you.)

Now, let me deal with one of the complaints that libertarians falsely have made against the wonders and greatness of government: the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is heavy-handed and abusive. Why, even as I write this article (on Saturday, November 14), I see that there is a terrible piece on this website that dares question our government masters who simply are protecting us from the predations of private enterprise.

If it were not for those wonderful TSA people, airlines would practically invite terrorists onto passenger aircraft and all of our cities would lay in ruins as plane after plane would be crashing into them, BECAUSE THIS IS THE GOAL OF THE PRIVATE AIRLINES: KILL ALL THEIR PASSENGERS. How do I know this is true? Professor Amy has told me.

Now, wait a minute, you say. What about our rights? Doesn’t the Declaration of Independence say that the role of government is to protect those rights that we already own by virtue of our human existence? Oh, silly you. Professor Amy is much more on target:

We often make the mistake of seeing our rights and civil liberties as merely the absence of some kind of governmental action. We believe that we have free speech or freedom of religion when the government does nothing to impede those freedoms. But in reality, our rights depend heavily on active government — on positive government actions. In fact, the very existence of rights depends on government. Rights and civil liberties are actually political constructs — creations of government. Rights do not exist until they are created by law or established in a constitution. We only have the right of free speech because it is guaranteed in our constitution. If we didn’t have our constitution, or if we didn’t have government, our civil liberties would literally not exist. (Emphasis mine) In the preamble of the Constitution, the founding fathers did not say that in order to “secure liberty for ourselves and our posterity” they were going to abolish government; they said that they were going to “ordain and establish” a democratic constitutional government to do so. They knew, as Benjamin Barber has explained, that “in democracies, representative institutions do not steal our liberties from us, they are the precious medium through which we secure our liberties.”

Yes, before the establishment of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, no one had rights. Furthermore, those colonials who believed in things like liberty and the absence of tyranny were all wet. They didn’t have any rights because government had not established them. So THERE, readers of this page! Bet you have not even thought of this timeless truth!

As I read through this wonderful website, I find it is a treasure trove of Truth and Beauty, as I go through declaration after declaration in which we are told that taxes are what secure our freedom, that high taxes are preferable to low taxes, and bureaucracy is pure (when Democrats run it) and much more freedom-loving than those old private companies.

Professor Amy gives many wonderful examples that we should heed, and I will present a few. The first deals with the present economic crisis that occurred because private enterprise — working without any government regulatory oversight — created this recession that never would have happened had government been fully in charge of our economy. You see, the Federal Reserve System operates to protect the rest of us from the ravages of private enterprise, and when the government forced lending institutions to reduce their underwriting standards, government was not being foolish and reckless; oh, no, it was protecting its citizens from those mean and nasty arbitrary standards that those wicked people in private enterprise lay upon us.

(You see, companies only profit when they kill or maim their customers, or put prices so high that they cannot sell many of their goods. It is government that provides our goods for free because government is so far-seeing and so wise that it knows how to take scarce goods the turn them into free goods without causing any economic dislocations. After all, everyone who believes in the wonder and goodness of government knows that the Law of Scarcity was made up by evil people who think government is bad.)

This past week, people celebrated the 20th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall. Yet, few people know the truth as to why communism, and especially the Soviet Union, collapsed. That is why you, dear reader, must read Government Is Good, for Professor Amy has the answer to that question, too.

Why did the U.S.S.R. go the way of the Assyrian Empire? Let the good professor explain:

…our rights depend heavily on an active and well-funded government. When governments find themselves in a position where they can’t effectively tax and spend as has sometimes been the case in countries in the former Soviet Union citizen rights and liberties become unenforceable and largely non-existent.

I had no idea that the real reason that Stalin murdered millions of people and enslaved hundreds of millions more was because he and his minions could not “effectively tax and spend.” Oh, if only, IF ONLY the leadership of the Soviet government could have found this website or hired this great professor as a consultant, THE U.S.S.R. COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED, AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN A BEACON OF GOOD GOVERNMENT AND LIBERTY FOR THE ENTIRE WORLD. Hooda thunkit? Therefore, dear readers, you must abandon this antiquated notion that the state is the enemy of liberty. Indeed, those who heap calumny upon the agents of the state are guilty of promoting false and evil doctrines. Thus, to gain a true education, you must read, nay absorb, Government Is Good.

As you read through this site (which, admittedly, takes a long, long time, as Professor Amy is quite prolific in his writings that lay praise upon praise upon the state) you will find many wonderful truths. You will discover that Ludwig von Mises was absolutely wrong in his views on bureaucracy because Professor Amy knows that bureaucracy is an efficient and compassionate servant of a mostly-ungrateful populace. You also will discover that you need to pay more taxes — lest our fate be that of the U.S.S.R.

Furthermore, you will find that one of the Great Prophets of our time is Paul Krugman. (He does not mention Ron Paul, but I am sure that the Good Professor believes that Rep. Paul is a very bad man who is harming the Cause of Good Government because, as we already know, Government Is Good.)

Should you continue to explore this wonderful site, you will find that capitalism itself “needs government.” If you read this section, you will find that the reason serfdom existed in the Middle Ages was because there was not enough government. You also will find that private enterprise cannot survive without government because government money is sound and wonderful, not like that dishonest private money that used to exist.

(The one thing that puzzles me, however, is why the Good Professor does not deal with what seems to be the obvious question: If government is so good and so efficient and so kind and gentle, then why do we need private enterprise and private property at all? I’m not sure as to why he has failed to make the obvious connection, but maybe he wants to humor us or let us go slowly into socialism so that when we finally discover the error of our ways, we won’t be in despair because we had wasted so much of our lives.)

I could go on and on, but I won’t. My article, unfortunately, will not convince many readers of this blog and other libertarians to change their evil ways and embrace the state. No, they will continue to believe the falsehood that the U.S.S.R. collapsed because economic calculation under socialism is impossible and not the truth, according to the Good Professor, that the Land of Lenin and Stalin could not “effectively tax and spend.”

So, there you have it. Government Is Good, and if you don’t believe it, then perhaps you need to face the same fate as befell David Koresh and Vickie Weaver, who got what was coming to them because they didn’t believe that Government Is Good.

William L. Anderson, Ph.D. [send him mail], teaches economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland, and is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He also is a consultant with American Economic Services. Visit his blog.

Copyright © 2009 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

So many of the world’s billionaires and other great achievers, past and present, never graduated from high school, or never even went to school at all, that one begins to wonder if there’s a pattern here. Could removing your children from public school entirely be a key to their future success?

John Taylor Gatto was a public school teacher in New York City. Named the city’s Teacher of the Year three times in a row, and the New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991, he must have been doing something right. In the prologue to his book, The Underground History of American Education, he details some of the ways that the administration tried to get rid of him for being, well, a good teacher. The same year he was named the state’s Teacher of the Year, he resigned by writing a letter to theWall Street Journal in which he said he did not want to “hurt kids to make a living.”

And if you haven’t read it, that book is well worth a read. It tells where modern public schools came from and how and why they were established in the United States, the one place in the world where, at the time, the people would have been vehemently opposed to such a thing. (And they were.)

Gatto spoke at the 2009 New Hampshire Liberty Forum on another possible way that children might receive an education, which he calls “open source education.” His speech was drawn from a part of his new book, Weapons of Mass Instruction. In this book Gatto presents solutions to the problem of public education.

Gatto traces the history of the idea of forced public schooling all the way back to Plato, shows its connections to racism, and illustrates that the purpose of public schooling is to confuse the vast majority of people, destroy their imaginations, and make them easier for the rulers of the day to manage.

This remains the primary purpose of public schools to this day.

One possible solution is what he calls open source learning, which he illustrates with several examples.

It’s clear that public schools are a disaster and wholly destructive to a free, independent civilization. Sending a child there is a sentence worse than death, as it destroys the very soul. As we’ve seen, this is by design. Regardless of solution, it’s clear that if you want your children to have an education, the last place you would send them is a public school.

When I think of public schools, the first thing that comes to mind now is the high school principal who was removed from his position and escorted from the building by police because he wanted his teachers to use lesson plans. Everyone knows public schools are broken. Can they be fixed?

Lisa Snell, director of education and child welfare at the Reason Foundation, spoke at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum on how even the smallest measures of market reform in education yield significant improvements in the existing public school systems. She discussed several education reforms such as property tax credits and vouchers, but spent the bulk of her talk discussing the most minimal reform, charter schools.

Even such a slight improvement in the situation can turn things around for the students who are stuck in an underperforming school, such as Locke High School in the Watts area of Los Angeles, Calif. During the speech she also showed a video from reason.tv, Unlocked, showing how the teachers’ union fought tooth and nail to prevent its conversion into a charter school, where they would actually have to teach instead of just sitting in class reading a book all day while students ran amok.

“Do these marginal improvements just make public schools stronger and more attractive to parents, thus sidelining the larger goal of a true market in education?” she asks. “Anything that takes money away from that [public school] monopoly and divides it up among the parents is a positive sign.”

The New Hampshire Liberty Forum is an annual conference hosted by the Free State Project to showcase libertarian activism, especially in New Hampshire. The Free State Project aims to have 20,000 activists move to New Hampshire to work toward reclaiming and securing liberty.

If you consider yourself a citizen of the United States of America, or of any other country, you should not watch this video until you have mentally prepared yourself to have everything you believe in challenged. You have been warned.

What if everything you believed in turned out to be just a set of delusions programmed into you from early childhood? How would you react upon learning this? Most people will go into denial and get very highly emotional, even to the point of violence. You are probably no exception.

If you continue reading, and watch this video, you will be taking the first step in freeing yourself from a pervasive cult which binds far too many people. A good start to mentally preparing yourself would be to go back and watch Glen Jacobs’ talk from the 2009 New Hampshire Liberty Forum.

Marc Stevens also spoke at the Liberty Forum regarding the delusions most people believe in and live their lives under. Stevens, who worked for over a decade as a legal consultant, helped people win court cases ranging from minor traffic tickets to major tax cases. He tells his story of how he came to understand these delusions and how he used them to win in court. This didn’t come without a price, though, as in the process his clients also came to understand the delusions they had been living under.

“I had somebody who didn’t call me for six months,” Stevens said during his talk. “‘Where the hell you been?’ He basically said, ‘I couldn’t stand you. You tore my reality out and didn’t replace it with anything.’”

The delusions, of course, are that there is a state, and that you are a citizen of it. To prove this, Stevens cites from numerous court cases, Lysander Spooner’s No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, and common sense.

“They force us into their little schools when we’re four or five years old and they ram their crap down our throats day in and day out.”

None of this was new to me as I had come to much the same conclusions almost two years ago through the process of writing for Homeland Stupidity. But it will be a much more difficult process for most people, and I’d guess that most people who watch this video and read these words will not be ready to accept this simple truth. In his talk, Stevens also addresses why people have this psychological reaction, so if you are among the majority who stopped watching partway through, you may wish to go back and finish the video.

Marc Stevens wrote the book Adventures in Legal Land, in which he goes into further detail as well as providing case citations, and methods people can use in court to challenge almost anything the bureaucrats are trying to put them through. He also hosts a radio show, The No State Project.

The Free State Project, which aims to have 20,000 activists move to New Hampshire to work toward establishing a free society, hosts the annual New Hampshire Liberty Forum to showcase the state and provide potential participants the opportunity to meet other liberty lovers and investigate the feasibility of a move for themselves. This year’s theme, “Many Paths to Liberty,” was meant to highlight the fact that freedom may not be achieved by any single method but by individual people working toward freedom in their own unique ways, according to conference organizer Chris Lawless.

Separate school and state? But how will children get an education unless the government gives it to them?

Alan Schaeffer, the current president of the Alliance for the Separation of School and State, explained at the 2009 New Hampshire Liberty Forum, some of the underpinnings of the current government education system, why it doesn’t educate children, and how educational freedom can give our children the education they so desperately need.

Here’s a quote, from H. L. Mencken, in his own magazine,The American Mercury, in April 1924. This quote was abbreviated slightly in Schaeffer’s speech, but I think a fuller quotation is instructive:

That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else. — American Mercury Magazine

Schaeffer covers how this is just as true now as then, which is one reason why education, if it is truly desirable, must not be a function of government.

This short talk was part of the opening ceremonies at the New Hampshire Liberty Forum and introduced the education track which culminated with a speech by John Taylor Gatto, a former Teacher of the Year who has written several books on how and why American public education fails to educate our children, including the recently released Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling.

On September 17, while the financial world was still reeling from the collapse of several Wall Street institutions, a next day air envelope arrived at my house. I probably should have opened it and read its contents before this weekend, because it has a direct bearing on the present crisis.

Inside I found a copy of I.O.U.S.A., the companion book to the movie which was released in theaters last month, along with a one night town hall meeting with several financial luminaries that was simulcast to some 400 theaters around the country. I watched the movie and town hall meeting and commented on them earlier; I won’t repeat much of what I said about them.

I.O.U.S.A. opens like this:

On January 28, 2008, the forty-third president of the United States, George W. Bush, gave the final State of the Union address of his presidency. During the speech, he was interrupted 72 times by applause. Curiously, the president only broached the nation’s deficit once, briefly, and then only to reassert the administration’s pie-in-the-sky projection that it will be reduced to zero by 2012.

We’ve all heard the real economic news by now, or worse, experienced it. You’ve gone to the bank to find it closed, or you’ve gotten laid off, or you’re just feeling the pinch in your wallet as money grows ever tighter. You need to understand how and why it happened if you’re going to get yourself out of this economic mess, because surely you’ve figured out by now that your so-called leaders in Washington aren’t going to do it; they seem hell-bent on making things even worse for you.

The book, an advance copy graciously sent to me by its publisher Wiley & Sons, is divided into two parts. Part one is a scant 94 pages which you could read in 94 minutes if your jaw weren’t constantly dropping to the floor at the eye-popping numbers and graphs illustrating the United States’ fiscal recklessness, many of which were also presented in the movie. The book covers the same four deficits as were illustrated in the movie: the budget deficit, the savings deficit, the trade deficit and the leadership deficit. I won’t repeat those here, either.

Weaved in with the shocking statistics about the $9 trillion plus national debt and the $53 trillion plus in unfunded obligations coming in future years,I.O.U.S.A. also acts as economic primer and tells the story of how the documentary came about. Inspired by the 2005 book Empire of Debt, former comptroller general David Walker, who actually quit his job as the nation’s top accountant to help bring the documentary to fruition, came together withEmpire of Debt authors Bill Bonner and Addison Wiggin and the filmmakers who would eventually thinkI.O.U.S.A. the most challenging project they had ever undertaken.

Indeed, how do you make an economic cold shower interesting when the economy isn’t obviously falling apart, as it wasn’t a mere month ago? Today, with the recent economic turmoil expected not only to continue but to worsen, I’d expect interest in both the book and the movie, which is currently in limited theatrical release, to be much higher. The movie did very well at making an inherently “unsexy” topic interesting, and the book will do for those who can’t find the movie playing near them.

Like many other Wiley books, this part is also peppered with quotations and notes in the margins which explain various different economic concepts. Not to mention the occasional sidebar, such as “Ron Paul’s Historic Love Affair with Alan Greenspan” which explains that they “have had a long and tumultuous relationship.” Of course, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) is well known for skewering the Federal Reserve chairman, whoever he happens to be, in Congressional hearings.

As usual, I won’t share much of the content of the book with you, though I will say that there’s a lot of detail crammed into those 94 pages that simply could not be covered in the 85 minutes of video that comprised I.O.U.S.A.: The Movie.

The other reason to buy this book is part two, the other 164 pages: Interview transcripts with twelve “economic luminaries.”

Those interviewed include Alice Rivlin, who helped balance the budget during the Clinton administration; Wiliam Bonner, who founded Agora, Inc., and wroteEmpire of Debt which inspired the I.O.U.S.A. project; former Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Paul O’Neill; former Commerce secretary Peter G. Peterson, who co-founded the Concord Coalition and the foundation which bears his name; former Federal Reserve chairmen Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan; former presidential candidate Ron Paul, staunch opponent of the Federal Reserve system; (and those 14 pages are worth the price alone) world’s richest man and Pollyanna Warren Buffett; James Areddy, China correspondent for theWall Street Journal; economist Arthur Laffer; and last but hardly least, Steve Forbes.

You should not be surprised that the so-called experts disagree with each other, though you’ll learn much and gain a lot of insight from reading what they had to say. Their fundamental difference is in the school of thought. There are two main schools of thought in economics: Austrian economics and Keynesian economics. Which is right? Austrian economics predicted the current economic crisis. Keynesian economics said everything was fine, still is fine, and is getting better. Your wallet will tell you which one is right, and which one you should learn — fast — before there’s nothing left of your wallet.

Meanwhile, the national debt is a problem which can be ignored no longer.I.O.U.S.A. lays out the problem in frightening detail. Without solving the problem, economic collapse the likes of which America has never seen will be the result. Incidentally this is why there must be no bailout: we cannot afford even one more cent added to the national debt, let alone another trillion dollars.I.O.U.S.A. explains why.

By the time you read this,I.O.U.S.A. should be in your local bookstore. Or you can pick up a copy from Amazon. In addition, attend the Concord Coalition’s Fiscal Wake-Up Tour when it comes to a city near you and see David Walker explain the economic crisis in person.

Economics isn’t merely a dry, boring study of money. It is, boiled down to its essence, a study of human nature: how people interact and trade with each other. Since this obviously involves money, there is no shortage of people who want some of that money for themselves, when they haven’t earned it. And the chief ways in which they take that money are to confuse people and to establish governments.

At this time there are so many branches of economics and fields of study within the field that I couldn’t even summarize them all for you. But one thing most of them have in common is that they involve governments and are confusing. This is no accident.

That’s why it’s so important that people understand a few basic things. First, the law of supply and demand. You’ve certainly heard of it. It’s likely you even understand it. Second, that around this simple law is built most other economic theories and fields of study, and that if you are confused, it’s likely because someone is trying to separate you from your money without offering anything of value in return.

Of course, the only way that someone can get away with stealing your hard-earned money is by working for a government.

And that’s just one of many reasons why, in order to advance human civilization, it’s time to dispense with government entirely. This is the premise of The Market for Liberty.

The authors, Linda and Morris Tannehill, have recently granted permission for distribution of their book, originally published in 1970 and updated in 1984 and 1993, as a free audiobook in MP3 format. And Ian Bernard, host of the nationally syndicated radio show Free Talk Live, narrated the new audiobook.

There was once a time when it was widely believed the world was flat and the sun revolved around the earth. Now we know better and most reasonable people have rejected these ideas. Similarly, most people have rejected the once widely accepted idea of slavery, and rightfully so. If you’re like most people, your government high school history classes probably taught you that slavery was abolished years ago. Government people wouldn’t lie to you, would they?

The book you are about to listen to explodes the myths of government. Its message is simple:

“Government is an unnecessary evil and freedom is the best and most practical way of life.” Spread this idea, and we can change the world. That is why I’ve taken the time to create this audio book. These days, many people do not have time to read and it would be a shame to allow such a brilliant work to continue to gather dust on the shelves of history.

Morris and Linda Tannehill’s iconoclasticThe Market for Liberty is one of the most important books of our time. Written originally in 1970, it is even more relevant now as I record it as an audio book at the end of 2007.The Market for Liberty is the antidote to years of government indoctrination, lies, and misinformation.

Unless you already consider yourself a voluntaryist, anarcho-capitalist, or free marketeer, prepare yourself for a major paradigm shift. — The Market for Liberty, Audiobook edition, Introduction

I just finished listening to it, and I was blown away. Every conceivable objection I’ve ever heard to the idea of abolishing government is dealt with in an engaging, accessible manner, understandable to everyone — though it’s sure to bend the mind if it’s the first time you’ve heard the idea!

I recommend you listen to the audiobook and then buy a dead tree copy so you can stop and think on the frequently occurring shocking passages.

This book may well open your eyes to something I’ve known for quite a long time: government truly is an unnecessary evil, and like slavery, its time on the earth must come to an end if civilization is to advance.

Thomas Paine once said that: “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

In order to exist, government must necessarily take away some rights from some people in order to protect the remaining rights of all. I have heard this called the “social contract.”

For instance, the government here taxes the incomes of most Americans at backbreaking levels, so much so that in a two-parent household, both parents must work, simply to make the tax payments and have enough left over to feed the family. This level of taxation is almost unheard of throughout human history, until the 20th century. It now takes more than six months of the year for the average American to pay the cost of today’s government.

Then the government reneges on its promise to protect individual rights, by violating them instead. For instance, for many years the government has waged a so-called “war on drugs” which not only violates the right of the people to have and use drugs, but which the government has used to infringe other rights as well, such as the right to privacy.

“he natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground,” Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying. The usual question, though it’s rarely asked this way, is who shall be violated, in what ways, and to what extent? And government employees are always thinking up new and innovative ways to violate people’s rights. It’s what they get paid for.

Much of what today’s governments do is presented in the guise of “helping” the “less fortunate” who, without government help, would have no way to survive in a cruel, “uncaring” world. It’s for this reason that more than 50% of your income goes to government taxes and regulations. And while helping the less fortunate is certainly a good thing to do, being forced to do it destroys any honor there might have been in the act of charity. To top it all off, government welfare even harms the recipients of the stolen blood money, by entangling them in a system they can’t easily get out of, teaching them to expect others to provide for them, and even sapping their will to live.

How has government violated your rights to life, liberty and property? Tell us your story.