Richard W. Rahn

Starting over in Venezuela

The economy of Venezuela has collapsed as a result of gross socialist mismanagement. The currency is essentially worthless. To start over, the next government of Venezuela must re-establish the rule of law, protect private property rights and create a new currency.

February 25, 2019

How New York lost its population to increasing taxes and mounting debt

Last week, there was the pitiful scene of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York begging President Trump to restore a tax provision which unfairly benefitted New Yorkers. It seems that many high-income New Yorkers have been moving their tax homes to Florida, undermining the New York tax base.

February 18, 2019

Government debt, a real crisis

"Mankind is doomed!" Headline writers have been writing that headline since the invention of printing — and someday it will come about. For about four decades, that headline has most often been applied to the threat of global warming. Every couple of years, some notable comes out with a pronouncement that the governments of the world only have 5 or 10 years to make fundamental changes or we are all toast. The deadlines come and go, without action, and most people carry on with life as they always have.

February 11, 2019

Destroying success with socialism

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness ." Charles Dickens wrote those words referring to the era of the French Revolution a little over two centuries ago, but they could equally apply to today.

February 4, 2019

Robert Mueller stages a grossly excessive, theatrical and costly raid

How many agents should a law enforcement organization send to arrest a highly visible, older, non-violent man, who is not a flight risk, for allegedly lying to Congress — particularly, when the individual has appeared numerous times on national TV saying he expects to be arrested and was obviously making no attempt to avoid law enforcement officials?

January 28, 2019

How Brexit and U.K. troubles can be traced to the Stamp Act of 1765

The current troubles in the U.K. can be traced back to a fateful decision of King George III and the British Parliament in 1765 with the imposition of the Stamp Act on the American colonies. The Stamp Act placed a direct tax on printed materials, including legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers and many other types of paper.

January 21, 2019

When socialism is romanticized

Who should pay for your health care? For your education? For your retirement?

January 14, 2019

The return of the tax bullies

Bully: "A person who uses strength or power to harm or intimidate those who are weaker."

January 7, 2019

Genocide, slavery and immigration

My New Year's wish for the coming year is for more of my fellow Americans and others to learn some basic history and try to get a grip on reality. Someone who writes for The New York Times under the name of Michelle Alexander wrote a column published last week, "Who Deserves Citizenship?"

December 31, 2018

Why the Federal Reserve’s setting of interest rates is doomed

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell just announced another quarter-point interest rate hike. The markets immediately responded by dropping several hundred points.

December 24, 2018

The uncertainty tax

President Trump's tariff turmoil, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May's bungled Brexit negotiations, French President Emmanuel Macron's tax fiasco, etc. are all causing a slowdown in productive global investment and economic growth. The recent decline in the stock markets can be largely attributed to policy uncertainty. Mr. Trump is not to blame for the European mess, but his erratic trade actions and other unpredictable comments have contributed to the drop. He was on solid ground when he took much of the credit for the stock market rise, but now he needs to take some of the blame for the fall.

December 17, 2018

When the bureaucracy goes too far

What do the Paris riots, Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, the dusky gopher frog and Peter Wallison's new book "Judicial Fortitude" all have in common? They are all signs that the peasants have had it with the bureaucratic state and the smug elitists who have been ruling the globe. Despite never-ending attempts to quash it, the basic human desire for liberty keeps re-emerging.

December 10, 2018

Too little progress against death and taxes

Want to live longer? Your odds improve if you are a rich, well-educated Asian or European woman accountant who engages in moderate exercise. If you are an overweight retired professional football player, your odds of having a shorter than average life-span are high. Olympic athletics have a longer than average lifespan, while athletes who engage in contact sports have shorter than average lifespans. Contact sports frequently cause a variety of damage to the bone and skeletal system, as well as to the brain, whose effects grow over-time.

December 3, 2018

The democracy myth

Would you prefer to live in a country that has a high degree of individual liberty but is not a democracy, or live in a democracy where individual liberties are curtailed?

November 26, 2018

The dumb courtship of Amazon

Would you vote for a politician who promised to both increase traffic congestion and increase your taxes — and yes, I wrote "increase." For those of us who live in Northern Virginia that is precisely what happened last week, when our state and local government officials announced with considerable fanfare that they had bribed Amazon — with billions of taxpayer money — to build one of its new headquarters in Virginia. With great pride, they also told us that they paid a much smaller bribe to Amazon per promised new job than did the New York governor and mayor. (Virginia Motto: We are not as dumb as New Yorkers.)

November 19, 2018

How countries maintain economic freedom and restrain corruption

We have many ways to measure how well public officials in all countries are behaving. Each year, various organizations provide country rankings as to how well countries are doing in maintaining economic freedom, restraining corruption, protecting civil liberties, including religious freedom, etc. One of the measures is the annual report by the World Bank on Doing Business. The 2019 report ranking 190 countries has just been released. The report investigates "the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it," including property rights and labor policies.

November 12, 2018