Many years ago, thoughtful, well-intentioned, educated people in the United States all understood that socialism was the future. The average citizen might have retained a quaint belief in the American system of free enterprise, limited government, and individual rights, but among the cognoscenti — academics, artists, newspaper and radio pundits — it was widely recognized that the capitalist experiment had run its course. The overwhelming consensus was that the coming century would see economies managed by benevolent experts: the chaotic, dog-eat-dog competition of the market would give way to rational central planning.
In 2008, the Cato Institute published Global Tax Revolution, laying out a comprehensive strategy for tax changes that would fuel American competitiveness, growth, and success in the world’s marketplace.
Although the new tax legislation has flaws, at its center are key corporate reforms that were long overdue.
Global Tax Revolution — detailing how to energize the U.S. economy with tax changes that embrace competition, overhaul the federal tax code, and significantly help businesses and workers succeed in the global economy — underscores the effort and impact of Cato’s ongoing work to educate policymakers and the public on tax reform and economic growth.
In a new book, Cato Institute scholars present practical, realistic approaches to today’s top foreign policy challenges, grounded in a strategy of restraint.
In Our Foreign Policy Choices: Rethinking America’s Global Role, Cato Institute scholars offer a clear strategic vision and a set of foreign policy options that starkly contrasts with the foreign policy platforms of both the Republican and Democratic parties. Bipartisan support exists for extensive alliance commitments, frequent military intervention, and higher defense spending. Cato’s new volume offers a wiser alternative that would make U.S. foreign policy cheaper, safer, and more popular.
Rather than being the policeman of the world, the authors argue for a more restrained approach to the world that avoids over-spending on defense and averts needless military intervention. Two editors of this book, Christopher Preble, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy, and Emma Ashford, Research Fellow, will attend the Democratic and Republican national conventions to put forth these ideas.
America’s current foreign policy of maintaining a global military presence and intervening even when vital U.S. interests are not at stake is expensive, dangerous, and unnecessary. The wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya have cost us dearly in blood and treasure without making us more secure.
“This new book seeks to advance a much-needed debate about the direction of foreign policy, says Emma Ashford. "Contrary to the conventional wisdom in Washington which identifies grave dangers to U.S. interests around every corner, Americans are fortunate to enjoy substantial security. We rarely need to use our military might. It’s in our interest to understand this.”
The U.S. fiscal imbalance—the excess of what we expect to spend, including repayment of our debt, over what government expects to receive in revenue—is large and growing. And with politicians proposing large new expenditures, little is being done to rectify the country’s fiscal health. Although some policymakers argue that fiscal meltdowns have never happened in U.S. history and that therefore “this time is no different,” the reality is that the nation’s fiscal situation has been deteriorating since the mid-1960s, is far worse than ever before, and could lead to a fiscal crisis if no major spending adjustments occur in the next few decades.
Committed to bringing attention to this growing danger, the Cato Institute inaugurated a significant project to investigate and document the federal government’s current financial position and the implications of federal fiscal policies and practices on the government’s financial sustainability. Two key project reports were to be crafted and distributed, both written by Jeffrey Miron, director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Economics at Harvard University.
The first report, issued several months ago, wasFiscal Imbalance: A Primer– which detailed the key principles necessary for understanding the true state of government financial health.
We are now able to provide, for free reading and downloading, the project’s second and most advanced report – U.S. Fiscal Imbalance over Time: This Time Is Different. This paper illustrates that while fiscal meltdown may not be imminent, the nation’s fiscal situation has been deteriorating since the mid 1960s, is far worse than ever before, and will continue to deteriorate if no adjustments occur as time moves forward.
The paper projects fiscal imbalance as of every year between 1965 and 2014, using data-supported assumptions about GDP growth, revenue, and trends in mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs. What does the paper reveal? The only way to restore fiscal balance is to scale back mandatory spending policies – particularly on large health care programs. This is a vast challenge of paramount importance.
It is our goal – and Cato’s ongoing commitment – that these reports help limit the unsustainable spending the federal government is undertaking, and provide effective strategies for diminishing our government’s dangerous fiscal instability.
Target of hundreds of death threats and ally to political dissidents, Flemming Rose, Foreign Editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, has a unique perspective on the importance of freedom of speech in a world plagued by fears of terrorism.
In 2006, Jyllands-Posten published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, inciting a worldwide firestorm and making Rose a target for religious extremists, forcing him to live with round-the-clock security. In the time since, Rose has met with political dissidents around the world—from former Soviet citizens to ex-Muslims living in Europe.
In his new book, The Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate on the Future of Free Speech, published by the Cato Institute, Rose not only recounts that story, but takes a hard look at attempts to limit free speech, peppering his heady prose with powerful anecdotes of his work to preserve this inalienable right and the interesting people he has met along the way.
In this new ebook, two scientists with more than half a century of experience between them explore the realities and myths of global warming.
With December’s U.N. Paris Climate Conference in the headlines, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate climate science from rhetoric. In Lukewarming: The New Climate Science that Changes Everything, Pat Michaels and Chip Knappenberger explain the real science and spin behind the headlines and come to a provocative conclusion: global warming is not hot—it’s lukewarm. While that may not sound massive, it does, as the book’s subtitle notes, change everything. Climate change is real, it is partially man-made, but it is clearer than ever that its impact has been exaggerated—with many of the headline-grabbing predictions now being rendered implausible or impossible. This fresh analysis is engaging and enlightening to readers of all backgrounds, and provides an invaluable foundation of information to those interested in being genuinely informed about global warming and the solid base of facts behind it.
There’s a tendency for human beings to believe that change comes from the top down. We believe that world leaders or top scientists can make significant changes in the way we live our lives. Author and journalist Matt Ridley challenges this notion in his book, The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge. He argues that we give too little weight to the bottom-up processes of evolution and that “Evolution is far more common, and far more influential, than most people recognize.”
Marian L. Tupy of HumanProgress.org will moderate the discussion featuring Matt Ridley and Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey. Attendance is free and there’s a luncheon following the forum.
If you can’t make it to the event, you can watch it live online at www.cato.org/live and join the conversation on Twitter using#EvolutionofEverything. Follow @CatoEvents on Twitter to get future event updates, live streams, and videos from the Cato Institute.
In a recent blog post, George Selgin of Cato’s Center for Monetary Alternatives reviews Ben Bernanke’s new book The Courage to Act.
Selgin starts off by balking at the reactions of the book’s fans, while also giving Bernanke credit for his own more sensible views:
“Is it really possible, I asked myself (as I struggled to keep my gorge from rising), that nobody here takes the moral hazard problem seriously? Do they really suppose that Senators Warren and Vitter and others seeking to limit the Fed’s bailout capacity are doing so because they like financial meltdowns and couldn’t care less if the U.S. economy went to hell in a hand-basket? To his credit, Ben Bernanke does understand the problem of moral hazard. Moreover, he claims, in his long but very readable memoir, to have struggled with it repeatedly over the course of the financial crises. “
While Selgin does poke several holes in Bernanke’s arguments, he is also clear that Bernanke himself cannot be blamed for the Fed’s failures:
“No one knows how to calculate the net present value of present and future financial losses. And who, in the midst of a crisis, would pay attention if someone managed to do it?
And that is why it makes little sense, after all, to blame Ben Bernanke for the Fed’s irresponsible bailouts. Apart from allowing Lehman Brothers to fail, he only did what just about any central banker would have done under the same circumstances. For among that tribe, the courage to act is one thing; the courage to refuse to rescue large, potentially insolvent firms is quite another. And that is why we need laws that make such rescues impossible.”
In his book, Birger explains America’s curiously lopsided dating and marriage market among single, straight, college-educated women who are looking for a partner. Birger investigates not only the consequences of this unequal ratio of college-educated men to women on dating but also a host of other social issues.
How do economics and game theory explain the dating scene in D.C.? Watch the event video and listen to a Cato Daily Podcast with Birger.
Dateonomics is available for purchase on Amazon or your local bookstore.
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