Category: Philosophy

The Heritage Foundation recently put out its 2012 Index of Economic Freedom. Like a lot of what Heritage puts out, its annual Index of Economic Freedom is exceedingly strange. Countries are assigned — without any coherent method — scores from 0 to 100 in categories like Labor Freedom, Business Freedom, Government Spending, and Property Rights.… Continue reading The endless struggle for ownership of “economic freedom”

Tim Worstall wrote a response to George Monbiot’s recent article and by proxy a blog post I wrote a short while ago. I do not intend to get into a back and forth between different blogs here, but one thing brought up by Worstall — both in a comment he left on my blog and… Continue reading Two different kinds of libertarians

The New York Times ran an article today about the poor state of social mobility in the United States. Those on the left have been making these points for such a long time that I was almost bored reading through it. As usual, the reactions of bloggers to the post were more interesting. Matthew Yglesias… Continue reading Income inequality as a freestanding problem

Conservatives are pretty shifty in arguments. One moment they appear to be concerned about the poor and how taxes will ultimately hurt them and kill their jobs. The other moment they seem to think the poor don’t deserve anything anyways. Most folks — no matter their political leanings — do not consciously think about the… Continue reading The three big conservative philosophical frameworks

Yesterday’s post about the strangeness of the flat tax position sparked a lot of conversation. I noticed some confusion here and there on what I was saying, so I thought a brief restatement might be helpful. The flat tax advocate usually talks about not wanting to make rich people pay more, or punish them for… Continue reading One more swipe at flat tax advocates