What is a nation?
In the modern political tradition, patriotism has always been revered. Not only is pride in and devotion to country seen as a positive, but its absence is also often taken as a sign of moral deficiency. Nationalism, on the other hand, is more suspect. The nationalist identifies with the nation and nationalism can manifest as a political ideology, as it did [...]
Is taxation theft?
Taxation is theft. For those who follow a strict definition
of private property rights there is little doubt: the morality of taking that
which belongs to other people [...]
Beware the pitfalls of a 70% tax on the rich
Radicalism
has arrived at the centre of US tax policy. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the
mercurial New York congresswoman, recently proposed a 70% marginal tax rate on
incomes [...]
How war damages capitalism’s reputation
Free-market capitalism has a bad reputation. The easy promises of socialism are an obvious part of the problem, able as it is to paint the individualism of the free market as [...]
Climate change is Big Government’s Trojan horse
When thousands of school children walked out of class to join a UK-wide protest against political inaction on climate change, they were widely applauded. Some thought the [...]
Do we have a crisis of democracy?
Is democracy experiencing a bit of a crisis? The Brexit process has highlighted the risk the establishment runs when they ask “the people”; the French Gilets Jaunes [...]
Is austerity killing the poor?
Austerity has a bad reputation. The (thoroughly unsuccessful)
attempts to balance the books in western democracies – who for decades have
been spending more than they [...]
Don’t believe the left’s structural explanations of inequality
Inequalities, the left is keen to tell us, are entrenched. When more blacks are stop-searched by police it is used as proof of institutionalised racism. If women are paid [...]
The delusions of Modern Monetary Theory
Modern Monetary Theory (“MMT”) is the new cool kid on the economic
ideas block. Well, it’s not quite new: MMT traces its root back to the early 20th
century and it was [...]
Is the government always wrong?
For libertarians, the state is the enemy. We are opposed to
government from a philosophical as well as a utilitarian angle, believing that
voluntary interactions between free [...]
Don’t listen to the left: Let’s celebrate the belief in meritocracy
Where is the revolution? That’s the question the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee asks in her column entitled ‘How the right tricked people into supporting rampant [...]