KA-POW! #41 - Kelly

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Kel Kelly for “Give Capitalism a Chance” :

My main message is that most of our economic problems derive from previous government intervention in the economy. In its attempts to "help" us, the government has managed and regulated the economy, and passed laws that sounded constructive but that in fact hurt the economy and us.

Political economic reality is replete with the law of unintended consequences. Our economic problems are the natural result of political forces, not the natural result of (supposedly evil) market forces. We have voted our current problems into existence by electing politicians who promised to help us by means of economic intervention and regulation.

KA-POW! #40 - DiLorenzo

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Thomas J. DiLorenzo for “Our Totalitarian Regulatory Bureaucracy” :

It may sound shocking to some, but modern-day America compares "favorably" to fascist Germany of the 1930s with regard to the degree to which the state interferes with and controls economic activity. First of all, government expenditures at all levels of government account for about 40 percent of national income. ... This doesn't count all of the off-budget government agencies that exist at the federal, state, and local levels of government as James Bennett and I documented in our book, Underground Government: The Off-Budget Public Sector. If this is included, government expenditures as a percentage of national income would be at least 45 percent, which is not so far from the 53 percent in Nazi Germany that Hayek alluded to.

KA-POW! #27 - Upshur

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Abel P. Upshur for “Our Federal Government” :

The principle that ours is a consolidated government of all the people of the United States, and not a confederation of sovereign States, must necessarily render it little less than omnipotent. That principle, carried out to its legitimate results, will assuredly render the federal government the strongest in the world. The powers of such a government are supposed to reside in a majority of the people; and, as its responsibility is only to the people, that majority may make it whatever they please.

...

But in a country so extensive as the United States, with great differences of character, interests and pursuits, and with these differences, too, marked by geographical lines, a fair opportunity is afforded for the exercise of an oppressive tyranny, by the majority over the minority.

KA-POW! #9 - Bastiat

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Frederic Bastiat for “Should the State Support the Arts?” excerpted from That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen, 1850 :

But, by a deduction as false as it is unjust, do you know what economists are accused of? It is, that when we disapprove of government support, we are supposed to disapprove of the thing itself whose support is discussed; and to be the enemies of every kind of activity, because we desire to see those activities, on the one hand free, and on the other seeking their own reward in themselves.

KA-POW! #8 - Chodorov

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Frank Chodorov for “Economics vs. Politics” :

Economics is not politics. One is a science, concerned with the immutable and constant laws of nature that determine the production and distribution of wealth; the other is the art of ruling. ...

KA-POW! #6 - Staib

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to student Eric M. Staib for “Obamacare is a Devastating Tax on the Working Class” :

The implication of this increased cost is that workers [with individual coverage] whose revenue productivity is less than $300 [or nearly $700 for those with family coverage] per month higher than their wages will be laid off, or have their hours cut to the level that will classify them as part-time. Ignoring established labor law, the bill leaves the definition of part-time and full-time to the discretion of the Commissioner of Obama's massive new health bureaucracy. The lower the new "Health Choices Commissioner" sets the threshold in an attempt to maximize the number of people receiving the employer contribution, the more hours of production employers will have to shave off to push their employees under the threshold, and the less those workers will take home in wages each week.

KA-POW! #5 - Vox Day

This week's “Kick-Ass Post O’th’ Week” (KA-POW) goes to Vox Day for “Extend, pretend and defend" :

There is always a fraudulent aspect to democratic government. There are things the electorate does not want to hear, so any candidate who hopes to win their support quickly learns to avoid subjecting the voters to uncomfortable truths. Once safely in office, it seldom serves the interests of the elected official to tell the people whose interest he nominally represents anything that will highlight the divergence between what is good for the legislator and what is good for those who will be subjected to the legislation he helps create.