On The Objective Standard blog yesterday there was a post on Auberon Herbert who was a 19th Century British political philosopher and advocate of personal liberty. For those who are fans of Ayn Rand, you will find much that is familiar to you in the words of this man who lived and worked decades before Atlas Shrugged. I encourage everyone to take the time to read it.
Being intrigued by what was offered in the blog post, I was very pleased to find that there are a couple of Herbert’s works
While listening to a lecture by Eric Daniels, The History of America – Part 4: The Industrial Republic, 1877-1920, I was intrigued by a topic he mentioned so I looked up the speech he was referring to.
The speech Acres of Diamonds by Christian minister Russell H. Conwell is concerned with, essentially, encouraging people to become successful by their own efforts, wherever they happen to be. While I don’t agree with all that is in the speech, the view of wealth and the wealthy it expresses
I have been listening to a great series of courses on American History by Eric Daniels. Currently I am in the 4th of the series, The History of America – Part 4: The Industrial Republic, 1877-1920, which is discussing a pivotal period in history when we really started to move towards becoming a mixed economy, welfare state.
During one of the lectures in this course he quotes Daniel Webster, who served two times as Secretary of State and twice declined the offer to be Vice President saying,
I have just added Cornerstone of Liberty: Property Rights in 21st Century America by Timothy Sandefur to my current reading rotation and even though I am just getting started I can tell this is going to a #facepalm sort of book. The early part of the book takes a quick survey of some of the more outrageous property rights cases, such as the case where a Toyota dealership was condemned so the property could be taken via eminent domain…to give to the BMW dealership next door.
The first case
While I do not agree 100% with what Andrew Mellon talks about in his 1924 book, Taxation: The People’s Business, I do wish more of today’s politicians would read it before they advocate for some of the economic measures they champion, such as higher corporate taxes, higher taxes on the “rich”, sales tax on medical devices, and higher minimum wages to name a few.
This quote of just one sentence comes in the context of a discussion on the effect of the high tax rates at the
It is still amazing to me that in reading a book written 90 years ago I find situations that appear essentially the same as those we face today. In Andrew Mellon’s Taxation: The People’s Business he quotes Henry Ford on the effect of high taxes on the rich.
High taxes on the rich do not take burdens off the poor. They put burdens on the poor. As far as our company is concerned, we can go on about as we now are, whether the surtax is 25% or 50%. We can make some improvements,
In reading Andrew Mellon’s 1924 book, Taxation: The People’s Business, I am pretty impressed with his general trend of thought. There are some areas where I don’t agree with him, such as on whether taxes are actually the proper way to fund government, but on the whole I like what
I find it very interesting to read the views of people from many years ago about the dangers of certain types of government action and seeing how those dangers are coming to pass now, or have already come to pass.
Ayn Rand is a great source of this type of thing and I am finding Andrew Mellon is as well. In his Taxation: The People’s Business, written in 1924, he pointed out the dangers of the government subsidizing business or giving bonuses to certain classes of consumers.
A bonus or subsidy
I am still mixing things up between Objective Communication and, among other things, Taxation: The People’s Business. Today’s quote from the latter is one that could just as easily have been written today rather than in a book written nearly 90 years ago.
Subsidies have been granted to some industries to encourage production until demand should become normal and bonuses have been granted to relieve certain classes of consumers burdened by the high prices of necessaries. Such efforts
One of the last essays in Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal is one titled “Alienation” by Nathaniel Branden. In this essay he talks about the view some authors have about modern society, and how it is because we are “too rational” that we feel separated, alienated, from the world around us and other people.
Branden argues that this feeling of alienation that some (many?) people experience is because they hold a view of the world that is contradictory to reality