World wide, wearing masks prevented millions of hospitalizations and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. When vaccines became widely available, they prevented millions of hospitalizations and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Both could have saved many more lives, prevented many more hospitalizations but for opposition to masking and vaccination. So why were so many […]

by Mike Kimel The Freedom to Diminish Other Peoples’ Freedom You’ve probably heard about this study by the Mercatus Institute looking at Freedom in the 50 States. I always find these measures look at the wrong things, and that’s usually because they pick one side of an equation and ignore the rest. See, I support […]

Peter Dorman at Econospeak speaks to the current selling of big idea models of the world (re-posted with permission from the author): There’s a review on the Dissent website by Steve Randy Waldman of Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America by Jonathan Levy. The book sounds interesting, but it […]

by Mike Kimel I am not a Libertarian Because I Believe in Freedom and Property Rights, And I’d Like to Minimize Government Coercion, Part 2 This is a follow-up to my previous post on libertarian philosophy, the aftermath of which was a surprising amount of, well, let’s just call it assorted vigorously uncomplementary communication. (Shows […]

by Mike Kimel I am not a Libertarian Because I Believe in Freedom and Property Rights, And I’d Like to Minimize Government Coercion I wandered over the Libertarian Party and I found their Platform. I’m sure there are a few items here and there with which some libertarians disagree, but in general, it seems to […]

by Linda Beale In earlier posts on ataxingmatter (here and here), I reviewed Robert Reich’s 2010 book, After Shock, and wrote about his suggested cures for the problems made most visible in the 2007 crash and the Great Depression that followed. The gist of the book is summed up in the following quote: “[L]eft to […]