Equality. Republicans often portray equality as the enemy of liberty, and Democrats prove them right.
Balderdash! We can increase equality at the same time as we increase liberty. We can have small government and a market based economy and have a much narrower wealth gap than we have today. We just need to dust off our copies of The Wealth of Nations and read the forgotten bits. That and throw in some more modern insights from Henry George, the Austrian school, the Public Choice school and a few others. Here are a some of the books particularly focused on equality:
The Balance of Wealth.Exposes the gigantic, yet hidden, subsidy to the rich.
Wealth to the Working Class. Why should management get paid so much compared to those who actually do the work? Do we really need unions to offset the power of management? Or do we have other options?
Shrinking the Corporations.What happens when all the big corporations merge together? Answer: SOCIALISM! The dictatorship of the proletariat proposed by Marx was just a change in management, not a change in system. Those who engage in merger-mania are doing the socializing. Breaking up the big corporations is something liberals and libertarians should agree upon. But how? Anti-trust law is often ill-defined, leaving businesses subject to the whims of judges and bureaucrats. In this book I explore other factors which we can play with to keep corporations from becoming too big. Whethere these suffice is to be determined, but it is safe to say that the current anti-trust laws aren’t getting the job done.
Welfare that works. We spend over a trillion dollars per year on welfare programs. Yet we still have poverty — and high crime and broken families. While the poor are better off than they were before we had much government welfare, how much is due to welfare and how much is simply due to general economic growth? Moreover, can we spend more to fix the remaining problems? Last I checked the government is going bankrupt. We haven’t had a balanced budged (on an accrual basis) in decades. Here we compare five basic options for designing a welfare system that is affordable and actually works.
Power to the People. In theory the United States is a democracy. In practice, we are ruled by two parties heavily influenced by monied special interests. Is there a way out?