Some Non-Covid Links

(Don Boudreaux)

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Juliette Sellgren’s just-released podcast with Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley is superb.

George Will writes brilliantly about taxation, cronyism, and the duplicity of the political class. A slice:

Now comes the pesky question of how to pay for the progressive agenda. Or, more precisely, how to pay the huge price of the minority portion of the agenda’s cost that will be financed by taxes rather than money creation or borrowing. Borrowing means future generations pay, but as has been said down the ages, what has posterity ever done for us?

The tedious fact is that there are only two ways to finance a government: present taxes and future taxes (counting the stealthy tax of inflation). Debt is taxation deferred.

Chris Edwards isn’t impressed with Biden’s infrastructure scheme.

Arnold Kling reflects epistemologically.

Steve Horwitz reminds us of an important truth about politics.

Christopher Barnard pleads for an end to the greenwashing of socialism.

David Hart makes available – free on-line – some of the works of the great Leveller John Lilburne.

Melissa Chen talks with Nick Gillespie about wokeness and radicalism.

Steven Greenhut pleads for a bipartisan effort to end the banana-republic practice of civil asset forfeiture. A slice:

Civil forfeiture laws allow police agencies to seize Americans’ homes, cars, and cash upon the suspicion that someone used the property in criminal activity—and without due process afforded to its owner. The courts file cases with odd names such as, “The United States Government v. a 2017 Ford Explorer.” The government targets the property—then forces owners to prove their innocence to get it back (and it’s a long and costly process to do so).

One need only do a little Google research to find endless appalling examples. In one Anaheim case, city and federal officials attempted to seize a $1.5 million commercial building after cops accused one of the owner’s tenants of illegally selling $37 worth of marijuana. Prosecutors ultimately dropped that case amid bad publicity, but California officials grab $100 million a year in such takings.

Here’s John Cochrane on defining inequality so that it can’t be ‘fixed.’