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RECOMMENDED WEBSITES IDEAS ON LIBERTY SPEECHES MISC
Updated: September 30, 2009
On this page you will find a wide variety of topics ranging from opportunities to learn more about liberty and economics.
Articles for my Students to Read (for exam preparation) Fall 2009
Beware of the Big-Government Tipping Point
Health Care Reform: when rationing may be rational
Essays on Liberty and Economics
Supply-Side Economics: Myths and Realities
The Entrepreneur as American Hero
Washington Could Use Less Keynes and More Hayek (NEW!)
Yertle the Turtle (to help children understand the value of liberty)
How a Capitalist Won World War II
The Supreme Court and our Founders
Freedom Fest
Every year the Young America's Foundation holds Freedom Fest - a three day series devoted to speeches and debates on liberty, the role of government in the economy and principles of individualism. Young America's Foundation has cast as its primary mission the promotion of the philosophy espoused by President Ronald Reagan. In 2004 ABC's John Stossel (seen here to my immediate left) and I were invited to speek at Freedom Fest. To order a copy of his speech entitled, "Enemies of Liberty" log onto YAF.org. To hear my speech on "The Curse of Alexander Hamilton" enter the SPEECHES section.
On May 13, 2005 I delivered a speech at Freedom Fest entitled, "Is Socialism America's Destiny?" CD's of the speech are available from the YAF website.
Liberty and Economics in the Movies
Miracle - Students of economics and liberty will love the underlying theme of dynamic capitalism triumphing over statist communism.
John Adams - an HBO miniseries with classic Libertarian dialogue
The Pursuit of Happyness - A look at the difference between rights and interests
Braveheart - Perhaps the greatest movie on human liberty ever made.
Flash of Genius - Why private property rights are important...
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rands' book as a movie.
Cinderella Man - Not only does this movie illustrate how the welfare state was not openly embraced by Americans in the 1930s, but there is a terrific scene where the boxer's manager and a fight promoter illustrate the power of Adam Smith's views of the self-interested man.
The Shawshank Redemption - One of the greatest movies ever on the subject of individual liberty and morality.
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington - Students of Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution will love this movie.
The Perfect Storm - Good or bad capitalism? Rational or irrational behavior?
Born Free - A wonderful movie to teach kids the difference between liberty and security
The Patriot - Mel Gibson's quote about tyrants early in the movie is a classic.
The Alamo - There is also a nice application of game theory in one scene for those of you who enjoy that subject. Hint: A violin is involved...
Open Range - An interesting look at the definition of property.
Saving Private Ryan - A terrific examination of resource use, opportunity cost and cost-benefit analysis.
Syriana - A disturbing, and relatively realistic look at the oil business - with a reference to Milton Friedman included!
You've Got Mail - For a look at the 'conventional wisdom' (i.e. wrong way of thinking) on the issue of predatory pricing.
The Rookie - This movie is one long exercise in the concept of opportunity cost.
Hoffa - For an interesting look at the labor union movement.
Wall Street - Another anti-Capitalism movie. The zero-sum game scene is typical of what Hollywood doesn't understand about markets.
'V' for Vendetta - The future?
When is TAX FREEDOM DAY in your state?
The average American worked until April 23rd of this year just to pay off the government. Depending on the state you live in, you might be a serf a little longer. I hope the news is good for you.
Do you live in an economically free state?
For many Americans, liberty is jeopardy because of the state they live in. Tax rates, regulations on businesses, eminent domain abuse and other factors contribute to economic liberty - or the lack thereof. To find out if you live in a state where freedom is respected, click here. Good luck!
The Economics of Education - Does school choice improve test scores? Is home-school a viable option? Click on the appropriate links to find out. Speaking of education, you must take a look at a brand new childrens book entitled, "Why Mommy is a Democrat". It speaks volumes about what kids are getting in our government schools. Try not to cry.
2009 Global Rankings of Economic Freedom - Where to live if you want liberty...
To learn more about what these rankings mean visit the Heritage Foundation website.
Ranking the Countries
Index of Economic Freedom World Rankings
Index of Economic Freedom World Rankings (Click on the country name for more details.)
World Rank Country Freedom Score Change from Previous
1 Hong Kong 90.0 +0.3 62 Albania 63.7 +1.3 123 India 54.4 +0.3 2 Singapore 87.1 -0.2 63 Uganda 63.5 -0.3 124 Rwanda 54.2 0.0 3 Australia 82.6 +0.4 64 France 63.3 -1.4 125 Suriname 54.1 -0.2 4 Ireland 82.2 -0.3 65 Romania 63.2 +1.5 126 Tonga 54.1 N/A 5 New Zealand 82.0 +1.2 66 Belize 63.0 0.0 127 Mauritania 53.9 -1.2 6 United States 80.7 -0.3 67 Thailand 63.0 +0.7 128 Niger 53.8 +1.0 7 Canada 80.5 +0.3 68 Slovenia 62.9 +2.7 129 Malawi 53.7 +1.1 8 Denmark 79.6 +0.4 69 Mongolia 62.8 -0.8 130 Bolivia 53.6 +0.5 9 Switzerland 79.4 -0.1 70 Dominica 62.6 N/A 131 Indonesia 53.4 +0.2 10 United Kingdom 79.0 -0.5 71 Namibia 62.4 +1.0 132 China 53.2 +0.1 11 Chile 78.3 -0.3 72 Colombia 62.3 +0.2 133 Nepal 53.2 -0.9 12 Netherlands 77.0 -0.4 73 Madagascar 62.2 -0.2 134 Bosnia and Herzegovina 53.1 -0.8 13 Estonia 76.4 -1.5 74 Kyrgyz Republic 61.8 +0.7 135 Ethiopia 53.0 +0.5 14 Iceland 75.9 +0.1 75 Turkey 61.6 +1.6 136 Cameroon 53.0 -1.3 15 Luxembourg 75.2 +0.5 76 Italy 61.4 -1.2 137 Ecuador 52.5 -2.8 16 Bahrain 74.8 +2.6 77 Cape Verde 61.3 +3.4 138 Argentina 52.3 -1.8 17 Finland 74.5 -0.1 78 Macedonia 61.2 +0.2 139 Micronesia 51.7 N/A 18 Mauritius 74.3 +1.7 79 Paraguay 61.0 +1.0 140 Djibouti 51.3 +0.1 19 Japan 72.8 -0.2 80 Fiji 61.0 -0.8 141 Syria 51.3 +4.2 20 Belgium 72.1 +0.5 81 Greece 60.8 +0.2 142 Equatorial Guinea 51.3 -0.3 21 Macau 72.0 N/A 82 Poland 60.3 0.0 143 Maldives 51.3 N/A 22 Barbados 71.5 +0.2 83 Kazakhstan 60.1 -1.0 144 Guinea 51.0 -1.8 23 Austria 71.2 -0.2 84 Nicaragua 59.8 -1.0 145 Vietnam 51.0 +0.6 24 Cyprus 70.8 -0.5 85 Burkina Faso 59.5 +3.8 146 Russia 50.8 +1.0 25 Germany 70.5 -0.1 86 Samoa 59.5 N/A 147 Haiti 50.5 +1.5 26 Sweden 70.5 -0.4 87 Guatemala 59.4 -0.4 148 Uzbekistan 50.5 -1.4 27 Bahamas, The 70.3 -0.8 88 Dominican Republic 59.2 +1.5 149 Timor-Leste 50.5 N/A 28 Norway 70.2 +1.6 89 Swaziland 59.1 +0.6 150 Laos 50.4 +0.1 29 Spain 70.1 +1.0 90 Kenya 58.7 -0.6 151 Lesotho 49.7 -2.5 30 Lithuania 70.0 -1.0 91 Honduras 58.7 -0.2 152 Ukraine 48.8 -2.2 31 Armenia 69.9 0.0 92 Vanuatu 58.4 N/A 153 Burundi 48.8 +2.6 32 Georgia 69.8 +0.5 93 Tanzania 58.3 +1.8 154 Togo 48.7 -0.2 33 El Salvador 69.8 +1.3 94 Montenegro 58.2 N/A 155 Guyana 48.4 -0.4 34 Botswana 69.7 +1.5 95 Lebanon 58.1 -1.9 156 Central African Republic 48.3 -0.3 35 Taiwan 69.5 -0.7 96 Ghana 58.1 +1.0 157 Liberia 48.1 N/A 36 Slovak Republic 69.4 -0.6 97 Egypt 58.0 -0.5 158 Sierra Leone 47.8 -0.5 37 Czech Republic 69.4 +1.2 98 Tunisia 58.0 -2.1 159 Seychelles 47.8 N/A 38 Uruguay 69.1 +1.2 99 Azerbaijan 58.0 +2.6 160 Bangladesh 47.5 +3.3 39 Saint Lucia 68.8 N/A 100 Bhutan 57.7 N/A 161 Chad 47.5 -0.4 40 South Korea 68.1 -0.5 101 Morocco 57.7 +2.1 162 Angola 47.0 +0.1 41 Trinidad and Tobago 68.0 -1.6 102 Pakistan 57.0 +1.4 163 Solomon Islands 46.0 N/A 42 Israel 67.6 +1.3 103 Yemen 56.9 +3.1 164 Kiribati 45.7 N/A 43 Oman 67.0 -0.3 104 Philippines, The 56.8 +0.8 165 Guinea-Bissau 45.4 +1.1 44 Hungary 66.8 -0.8 105 Brazil 56.7 +0.5 166 Republic of Congo 45.4 0.0 45 Latvia 66.6 -1.7 106 Cambodia 56.6 +0.8 167 Belarus 45.0 -0.4 46 Costa Rica 66.4 +2.2 107 Algeria 56.6 +0.4 168 Iran 44.6 -0.4 47 Malta 66.1 +0.1 108 Zambia 56.6 +0.4 169 Turkmenistan 44.2 +0.8 48 Qatar 65.8 +3.6 109 Serbia 56.6 N/A 170 São Tomé and Príncipe 43.8 N/A 49 Mexico 65.8 -0.3 110 Senegal 56.3 -2.0 171 Libya 43.5 +4.8 50 Kuwait 65.6 -2.5 111 Sri Lanka 56.0 -2.4 172 Comoros 43.3 N/A 51 Jordan 65.4 +1.3 112 Gambia, The 55.8 -1.1 173 Democratic Republic of Congo 42.8 N/A 52 Jamaica 65.2 -0.5 113 Mozambique 55.7 +0.2 174 Venezuela 39.9 -4.8 53 Portugal 64.9 +1.0 114 Mali 55.6 +0.1 175 Eritrea 38.5 N/A 54 United Arab Emirates 64.7 +2.2 115 Benin 55.4 +0.1 176 Burma 37.7 -1.8 55 Panama 64.7 0.0 116 Croatia 55.1 +1.0 177 Cuba 27.9 +0.4 56 Bulgaria 64.6 +0.9 117 Nigeria 55.1 0.0 178 Zimbabwe 22.7 -6.7 57 Peru 64.6 +0.9 118 Gabon 55.0 +0.9 179 North Korea 2.0 -1.0 58 Malaysia 64.6 +0.7 119 Côte d'Ivoire 55.0 +1.0 N/A Afghanistan N/A N/A 59 Saudi Arabia 64.3 +1.8 120 Moldova 54.9 -3.0 N/A Iraq N/A N/A 60 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 64.3 N/A 121 Papua New Guinea 54.8 N/A N/A Liechtenstein N/A N/A 61 South Africa 63.8 +0.4 122 Tajikistan 54.6 +0.2 N/A Sudan N/A N/A
Why you should consider economics as your major...
The Hot Major for Undergrads Seeking High Pay Is Economics
by Jessica E. Vascellaro
Provided by CareerJournal.com
What's your major? Around the world, college undergraduates' time-honored question is increasingly drawing the same answer: economics.
Colleges and universities in the United States awarded 16,141 degrees to economics majors in the 2003-2004 academic year, up nearly 40 percent from five years earlier, according to John J. Siegfried, an economics professor at Vanderbilt University. Siegfried tracks 272 colleges and universities around the country for the Journal of Economic Education.
The number of college students majoring in economics has been rising since the mid-1990s, according to the government's National Center for Education Statistics. Meanwhile, the number majoring in political science and government has declined and the number majoring in history and sociology has barely grown.
"There has been a clear explosion of economics as a major," says Mark Gertler, chairman of New York University's economics department.
The number of students majoring in economics has been rising even faster at top colleges. At New York University, for example, the number of econ majors has more than doubled in the past ten years. At nearly 800, it is now the most popular major.
Economics also is the most popular major at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where 964 students majored in the subject in 2005. The number of econ majors at Columbia University in New York has risen 67 percent since 1995. The University of Chicago said that last year, 24 percent of its entire graduating class, 240 students, departed with economics degrees.
The trend marks a big switch for the so-called dismal science, which saw big declines in undergraduate enrollments in the early 1990s as interest in other areas, like sociology, was growing. Behind the turnaround is a clear-eyed reading of supply and demand: In a global economy filled with uncertainty, many students see economics as the best vehicle for a job promising good pay and security.
And as its focus broadens, there are even some signs that economics is becoming cool.
In addition to probing the mechanics of inflation and exchange rates, academics now use statistics and an economist's view of how people respond to incentives to study issues such as AIDS, obesity and even terrorism. The surprise bestseller of the spring was Freakonomics, a book co-authored by a University of Chicago economist, Steven Levitt, which examines issues ranging from corruption among real estate agents to sumo wrestling.
Pooja Jotwani, a recent graduate of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., says she is certain her economics degree helped her land a job in Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s sales and trading division, where she will earn $55,000, not including bonus. She says the major strengthened her business skills and provided her with something very simple: financial security.
"People are fascinated with applying the economic mode of reasoning to a wide variety of issues, and these forces are causing them to study economics more and more," says Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard and former secretary of the Treasury.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, economics majors in their first job earn an average of nearly $43,000 a year--not as much as for computer science majors and engineering majors, who can earn in excess of $50,000 a year. But those computer and engineering jobs look increasingly threatened by competition from inexpensive, highly skilled workers in places like India and China.
"Historically, the trends [in college degrees] are largely connected to perceived job prospects," says Marvin Lazerson, historian of education and a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education in Philadelphia. He cites the recent example of computer science majors, whose ranks swelled in the 1990s and quickly subsided in the early 2000s, soon after the dot-com bubble burst and many companies started outsourcing computer-programming jobs abroad.
In contrast, economics and business majors ranked among the five most desirable majors in a 2004 survey of employers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, along with accounting, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering. It wasn't just banks and insurance companies that expressed interest in economics majors--companies in industries such as utilities and retailing did so, too.
Like many people whose eyes glaze over at a supply-and-demand curve, Nicholas Rendler, a 19-year-old student at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, says he finds economics boring. But he has gravitated to the topic anyway: He chose a major combining economics, sociology, and anthropology because he thinks economics is crucial to understanding the world.
"Economics can be very frustrating, but it is the world we are currently operating in and we need the basic framework," he says. Roberto Angulo, chief executive of AfterCollege Inc., a San Francisco online recruiting service with 267,000 registered users, says an economics major has practical job value. "Students are more employable if they study economics," he says. He graduated from Stanford University with an economics degree five years ago.
It isn't just the job calculus that is drawing students to the major: It also is the rapid spread of economic globalization. Many students around the world are wondering what effect global economic trends will have on them.
Foreign students studying in the United States are flocking to the major. Sabrina De Abreu, a student from Argentina about to start her senior year at Harvard, says her country's experiences made her choice easy. "When I grew up in Argentina, my country plunged into a recession," she says. "Understanding economics has become a fundamental part of my life."
Indeed, the rising popularity of the economics major appears to be a global phenomenon. A recent McKinsey Global Institute study found that the share of degrees in economics and business awarded in Poland from 1996 to 2002 more than doubled, to 36 percent from 16 percent; in Russia, the share jumped to 31 percent from 18 percent.
John Sutton, chairman of the economics department at London School of Economics, says the school's popularity is at an all-time high, in part due to interest from eastern Europe. Dr. Sutton says that as these countries undergo capitalist changes, "bright young students are beginning to see economic issues highlighted."
This article is reprinted by permission from CareerJournal.com, The Wall Street Journal career information site, © 2006, Dow Jones & Co. Inc. All rights reserved.
Today's Thoughts from others...
A letter from Ron Paul - September 22, 2008
Dear Friends:
The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.
We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.
Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.
Still, at least a few observations are necessary.The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?
We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.
Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).
Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."
Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?
Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.
It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.
The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.
F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:
Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.
To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.
The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?
Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.
The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.
I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.
H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.
In liberty,
Ron Paul
What is your political philosophy ? Take the World's Smallest Political Quiz to find out..
So, your answers indicate you might be a Libertarian. What does that mean?
"Libertarianism is the view that each person has the right to his life in any way he chooses so long as he or she respects the equal rights of others. Libertarians defend each person's right to life, liberty and property-rights that people have naturally, before governments are created. In the Libertarian view, all human relationships should be voluntary; the only actions that should be forbidden by law are those that involve the initiation of force against those who have not themselves uses force-actions like murder, robbery, rape, kidnapping and fraud."
According to Charles Murray, What it Means to Be a Libertarian, Broadway Books, 1997
For more on Libertarianism log onto any of the following websites:
http://www.libertarianism.com/
http://www.libertarianism.org/
http://www.theihs.org/libertyguide/
http://www.cato.org/dailys/01-01-99.html
Economics from the lighter side....
