In my latest National Post column I argue for trying the best imaginable government welfare system, the Negative Income Tax, in order to learn the bitter lesson that government welfare doesn't fail when money doesn't reach the intended beneficiaries but when it does reach them.
Just kidding. Yes, the Fraser Institute's annual calculation reveals that June 10 is indeed Tax Freedom Day this year. But we're nearly halfway through this year and this magnificent event is a day later than last year. I'm constantly hearing how some heartless administration has slashed this, gutted that, neoliberalism is rampant, Occupy is protesting, we need a national strategy, it's time to restore our faith in government and so on. Then you turn around and find the blob hasn't gotten any smaller.
Maybe it's time some conservative party in power somewhere actually, you know, made government smaller the way we keep hearing that conservatives do.
My latest National Post column takes aim at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for buying into a false historical account that undermines its otherwise commendable effort to get from truth to reconciliation. My criticisms of unrealism in aboriginal policy have opened me to predictable accusations of bigotry. But the reverse is true. Nowhere is frank talk more desperately needed because nowhere in Canada is policy a worse mess and it is aboriginals who suffer most even from well-meaning nonsense.
In my latest National Post column, I tell the government waiter I didn't order this patronizing rubbish.
My latest National Post column criticizes the obsession with solving mankind's problems, in this case poverty, with advanced mathematics, as though humans were things not people.
NBC has a remarkable story about a simple idea to help the environment. Not exactly a breath of fresh air... but it will lead to many of those. Sometimes it's not the big grandiose projects that matter.
Episode two of my "Reality University" podcast is now available, on Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions and the deep intellectual roots of political disagreements. I'm pleased to say Reality U has hit the "New and Noteworthy" section of the iTunes store. So please tune in, turn on and drop in.
The appointed president of the European Commission, a certain Jean-Claude Juncker, has just warned that if Greece leaves the Euro zone "we would put ourselves at risk because some, notably in the Anglo Saxon world, would try everything to deconstruct the euro area piece by piece, little by little." A spokesperson later clarified that when he said "Anglo Saxon world" he probably didn't mean the British personally so much as the loathsome "markets and speculators" one naturally associates with the wretched English-speakers of this world. A lovely thought phrased with exquisite tact. But why is it a warning? It strikes me as high time someone did it.