Sunday, April 18, 2010

From 1880

I found this on Libertarian Reddit:

Let’s consider, say, the year 1880. Here was a society in which people were free to keep everything they earned, because there was no income tax. They were also free to decide what to do with their own money—spend it, save it, invest it, donate it, or whatever. People were generally free to engage in occupations and professions without a license or permit. There were few federal economic regulations and regulatory agencies. No Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, bailouts, or so-called stimulus plans. No IRS. No Departments of Education, Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor. No EPA and OSHA. No Federal Reserve. No drug laws. Few systems of public schooling. No immigration controls. No federal minimum-wage laws or price controls. A monetary system based on gold and silver coins rather than paper money. No slavery. No CIA. No FBI. No torture or cruel or unusual punishments. No renditions. No overseas military empire. No military-industrial complex. As a libertarian, as far as I’m concerned, that’s a society that is pretty darned golden.

4 comments:

TarrantLibertyGuy said...

You're talking about the age of my favorite president, Grover Cleveland. A fan of Mises way before Ludwig was a sparkle in old man von Mises' Austrian eye. He reduced tariffs, restored our gold reserves to safe levels after a panic that ensued almost immediately after his inauguration, vetoed subsidies... and in fact, vetoed almost every darn bill that came to his desk (he used veto power more than any other president, I think). He trimmed bureaucracies and was a non-interventionist.

TarrantLibertyGuy said...

I sometimes wonder what the 'Laffer" effect would be if we did away with the personal income tax altogether, privatized social security, brought troops home - and converted to gold standard. Then froze spending and concentrated our efforts to pay down Federal debt.

Could that possibly increase government revenues? I don't know and I'm not Arthur Laffer... but doesn't seem unpossible. Note: I love the word unpossible.

NickM said...

TLG,
And Grover Clevelanddid it all on two non-consecutive occasions!

Anonymous said...

Ah, one quip:

The Dept. of Agriculture was founded in 1862. Granted that it has grown a wee bit in the interim....