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Life, Liberty, Property #126: Vermont Drifts Toward Property-Tax Doom Spiral
Opinion -Editorial -The state of Vermont has been raising property taxes rapidly in recent years. The state’s Tax Department is forecasting a 12 percent increase, making for a total increase of 41 percent over the past five years. -
Life, Liberty, Property #125: Trump’s Pivot Could Make Health Care Affordable Again
Opinion -Editorial -Trump’s statement was surprising because it marked a pivot toward a new perspective on health care reform: cash as king. That new approach could make health care affordable again. -
Life, Liberty, Property #124: Solving the Affordability Problem
Opinion -Editorial -Support for socialism among young Americans is increasing in reaction to the high cost of housing and other essentials, reports a new poll by The Heartland Institute’s Glenn C. Haskins Emerging Issues Center and Rasmussen Reports. -
Life, Liberty, Property #123: New York State of Confusion
Opinion -Editorial -“Mr. Mamdani is asking for a lot,” report Grace Ashford and Benjamin Oreskes at The New York Times. Mamdani will need enormous tax increases to cover his ambitious plans. -
Life, Liberty, Property #122: WSJ Article Finds Sanity in Trump’s Economic Policies
Opinion -Editorial -It is interesting that The Wall Street Journal published a very fair and sophisticated analysis of Trump’s economic policies last week. -
Life, Liberty, Property #121: Government Shutdowns and Political Polarization
Opinion -Editorial -The ongoing government shutdown, now in day 20, lays bare the increasingly acute political polarization of the United States. -
Life, Liberty, Property #120: Trump Versus Antifa
Opinion -Editorial -Less than a month after declaring Antifa a domestic terror organization, President Donald Trump told the press he intends to designate the group as a foreign terror organization. -
Life, Liberty, Property #119: Trump’s Academic Gambit
Opinion -Editorial -The Trump administration announced on Wednesday a proposed agreement with American universities to implement campus policy reforms in exchange for preferential treatment in the distribution of federal funding. -
Life, Liberty, Property #118: Another Shutdown Showdown
Opinion -Editorial -All signs now point toward the Federal Reserve (Fed) beginning a program of lowering interest rates, though cautiously and with no guarantees of continuation. -
Life, Liberty, Property #117: Fed Interest Rate Cut Remains on the Table
Opinion -Editorial -All signs now point toward the Federal Reserve (Fed) beginning a program of lowering interest rates, though cautiously and with no guarantees of continuation. -
Life, Liberty, Property #116: Young Adults Losing Faith in America, Free Markets, Poll Finds
Opinion -Editorial -A majority of young voters want a socialist to win the 2028 presidential election, and more than three-quarters want government to nationalize major U.S. industries, a new poll from The Heartland Institute and the Rasmussen group has found. -
Life, Liberty, Property #115: Has the Economy Turned the Corner Toward Steady Growth?
Opinion -Editorial -The latest numbers from the BLS indicate a growing economy, with gross domestic product rising at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the second quarter. -
Life, Liberty, Property #114: Fiat Money and the Phony Housing Boom
Opinion -Editorial -Decades of devaluation of the dollar through inflation have created a phony housing boom that's impeding homeownership. -
Life, Liberty, Property #113: Fed’s Consensus Slips as Interest Rates Stifle Economy
Opinion -Editorial -The Federal Reserve (Fed) has kept interest rates high this year, even though “growth of economic activity moderated in the first half of the year,” as the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) statement admitted two weeks ago. -
Life, Liberty, Property #112: Powell Beats Labor Market
Opinion -Two days after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced the central bank’s decision not to reduce interest rates, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced bad news about the U.S. economy. -
Life, Liberty, Property #111: Interest Rates Are Too High
Opinion -The U.S. economy appears to have begun a recovery this year toward more-natural and productive conditions after years of near-zero interest rates imposed by the nation’s central bank, the Federal Reserve (Fed). -
Can We Tax Ourselves More?
Opinion -Editorial -The Federal government appears headed to bankruptcy based on the Congressional Budget Office’s forecasts. Mathematically both reducing spending and increasing taxes can reduce deficits. But can Uncle Sam collect more tax revenue? -
Life, Liberty, Property #110: Confidence Rises as U.S. Economy Beats Expectations
Opinion -The June inflation number provided a good deal of ambiguity about whether the Federal Reserve is doing right. -
Life, Liberty, Property #109: Shooting for Fairness—but for Whom?
Opinion -A mass shooting in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana over the Fourth of July weekend put the city on edge and politicians under increasing scrutiny. -
Life, Liberty, Property #108: Supreme Court Affirms Constitutional Limit on Courts’ Authority
Opinion -Within a flurry of highly consequential and groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Friday’s ruling in Trump, President of the United States, et al. v. Casa, Inc., et al. stands out as a truly historic event. -
Life, Liberty, Property #107: Eminent Domain Case Tests Our Understanding of Federalism
Opinion -A New Jersey township’s plan to use eminent domain to seize a 175-year-old family farm has caught the Trump administration’s attention. It is an important case with critical implications about the purpose and conduct of government. -
Life, Liberty, Property #106: Inflation Report Belies Tariff-Inflation Predictions
Opinion -The consensus prediction about President Donald Trump’s massive program of tariffs was that it would cause rapid and highly damaging price inflation. The Wall Street Journal was prominent in conveying those claims, and the Federal Reserve (Fed), the U.S. central bank, concurred, forecasting that the tariffs would cause inflation. -
Life, Liberty, Property #105: The Political Tide Against a Fiscal Rescue
Opinion -Last week I noted that even the U.S. economy, the best in the world, cannot support the current and upcoming federal debt. Here I explain the dismal political reasons why a reversal is so unlikely. -
Life, Liberty, Property #104: There Is No Possible Bailout for the Federal Government
Opinion -The government long ago became extremely comfortable with the fact that the American people have always been able to bail them out. Bailouts, however, notoriously lead to further bailouts and then to bankruptcies.