Bradley Thomas | The Libertarian Institute

How Data Collection Drives State Intervention In Our Lives

by Bradley Thomas | Oct 18, 2020 | Featured Articles

The U.S. Census made the news recently, as a dispute over the deadline for its data collection made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Trump administration successfully lobbied for a deadline of Friday October 16, over the objections of the National Urban League who instead wanted the deadline extended to the end of October due to COVID-related delays. The traditional census has been conducted every decade since 1790, as mandated in the Constitution. The population count is used to determine representation in congressional districts for the next 10 years. The data is also “used to distribute...

What ‘Experts’ Miss About Economic Inequality

by Bradley Thomas | Sep 25, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles

How can the U.S. reduce economic inequality? That’s a question USA Today posed to three “policy experts on the left and the right” in this recent article. The responses, while unsurprising, were nevertheless disappointing. For libertarians, economic inequality itself is not problematic, as long as it is in the context of an unfettered market economy free of government privileges and interference. Of course, that’s not what we have. But instead of advocating for a more free economy to address inequality, the “experts” consulted by USA Today advocate for more state interference that would...

‘Serve and Protect’? Eighty Percent of Criminal Charges Are for Misdemeanors

by Bradley Thomas | Aug 31, 2020 | Criminal Justice, Featured Articles

A recent meeting by a North Carolina state government task force underscored that the mission today of American police forces may well be less to “serve and protect” and more to “harass and extract.” “Of North Carolina’s 1.9 million criminal charges, 1.6 million of those are misdemeanors,” reported the N.C Insider (subscription required). This statistic was revealed by Jessica Smith, a professor of public law and government at the UNC School of Government, to members of the N.C. Task Force on Racial Equity in an August 20 meeting. Smith told the work group that only 6.7% of those...

Debunking Marx’s ‘Iron Law of Wages’

by Bradley Thomas | Aug 17, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles

Does a competitive, free market capitalist system drive down wages for the common man? That’s the question I was confronted with in a recent exchange I had with a Marxist on Twitter. My original post stated that “Free, competitive markets don’t drive down worker wages, as Marx argued.” “Instead,” the post continued, “markets drive up wages because entrepreneurs must bid against one another to acquire and retain the workers they need.” This led me to my ultimate point that “government intervention that limits competition will repress wages.” The take home point, of course, was to illustrate...

Reboot Government? No, Dismantle It

by Bradley Thomas | Jul 30, 2020 | Featured Articles, Libertarianism

Imagine my intrigue at seeing this subtitle kicking off a recent op-ed in USA Today: Why do Americans hate Washington? One reason is that it makes us feel powerless. Americans hating Washington? An article exploring how the state makes its citizens feel powerless? Sign me up. It didn’t take long, however, for me to be disappointed. The article started out promising, by citing “discontent” toward government coming from “both sides.” “A survey in 2018, for example, found that almost two-thirds of Americans favored ‘very major reform’ of government, almost double from 20 years ago,” the article...

What Paul Krugman Gets Wrong About The $600 Unemployment Bonus

by Bradley Thomas | Jul 12, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles

The federal government’s program of supplemental unemployment benefits of up to $600 per week, as provided for in the CARES Act, is set to expire at the end of July. Whether or not to extend this program is setting up to become a contentious political battle mere months before this fall’s national election. But what of the economic debate? Keynesians like Paul Krugman who support the extension of the benefits focus on getting money in the hands of people most likely to spend it—boosting ‘aggregate demand.’ On Twitter, Krugman insisted the economic shutdown was “annoying but sustainable,” and...

Exposing Jerome Powell’s Lies About the Fed and Inequality

by Bradley Thomas | Jun 25, 2020 | Economics, Featured Articles

If the heads of the Federal Reserve are to be believed, Fed policies do not make wealth inequality worse. When asked recently if the Fed’s policies widen inequality, San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly stated without reservation: “Not in my judgment.” Previously, Fed Chairman Jay Powell at the end of May was less forceful in his response, but nevertheless danced around the question of Fed policy increasing inequality. “Everything we do is focused on creating an environment in which those people will have their best chance to keep their job or maybe get a new job,” was his...

If I Were a Racist…

by Bradley Thomas | Jun 18, 2020 | Featured Articles

Protests across the nation following the murder of George Floyd have inspired discussions beyond just police brutality, shining a spotlight on issues like “social justice” and “systemic racism.” But the divisive rhetoric on racism serves to distract from the statism. If I were a racist, I would support policies that negatively impact minorities. Anything that winds up making their lives and socioeconomic condition worse off would get my approval. On that score, big government could serve as a shining example with a record of harming minorities any racist would envy. The Welfare State For...