Great short interview of Walter Williams by Andrew Napolitano on government as the problem.

A local group in Kalamazoo, MI has put together a high school event with two LvMI scholars: Mark Brandly and Harry Veryser.  No cost.  Event is on Sat. March 19.

More info on this attachment: EconomicsInOneLessonFinalHR

For more info, call 269-345-0225.

Bob Murphy and Richard Ebeling will be speaking at the 2010 Freedom Seminar in Portland, Oregon on Saturday Nov. 13. Early-bird registration discount ends Nov. 5.  Student scholarships available.
More details at:
http://freedomseminars.org/

Download the 2010 Freedom Seminar Flyer providing additional details.

Two Mises Institute scholars will be speaking next month in Phoenix, AZ at an Austrian Economics event. Tom DiLorenzo and Mark Thornton will be speaking at an event hosted by Rocky Mountain Orthodontics. A flyer of the event can be viewed here.

If you are interested in attending, call RMO at (800) 525-6375. Registration Code: FMESEM0209
They also have online registration here. This is not sponsored by the Mises Institute.

In April, the Mises Institute will be conducting a one-day seminar in Colorado Springs, CO USA on this topic:
“The Great Depression: What We Can Learn From It Today”

We have a great list of speakers for this day: Walter Block, Tom DiLorenzo, Tom Woods, Doug French, and Lew Rockwell.

If you can join us, please register today for this event.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans. This is another example of our rulers attempting to brainwash us by re-defining taxation.

An Austrian economist of renown has just sent us an addendum to his Will, in which he leaves his books and papers to the Institute. We are very grateful for this, and would welcome more such bequests from scholars in any of the social sciences. Email me if you would like more information on making a similar bequest or outright gift to LvMI.

Sad news this morning (here and here) that a lady involved in the “high end” prostitution business killed herself because of government prosecution — she knew her life was over since she would be in prison for the best
years of her remaining life (from her perspective).

Her mother found the “D.C. Madam” hanged in the shed — with a note announcing her intention.

Shows what needless government regulation of a peaceful consensual business leads to. Sad it had to end this way — regardless of what one’s personal moral convictions are on this issue.

Rep. Ron Paul speaking about a tax protestor case.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal quotes a Princeton economist discussing the causes of terrorism:
“There is no evidence of a general tendency for impoverished or uneducated people to be more likely to support terrorism or join terrorist organizations than their higher-income, better-educated countrymen,” he said. The Sept. 11 attackers were relatively well-off men from a rich country, Saudi Arabia. “When nonviolent means of protest are curtailed,” he says, “malcontents appear to be more likely to turn to terrorist tactics.”

Rabah Amir (University of Arizona, Eller College of Management) & Malgorzata Knauff (Warsaw School of Economics) have published Ranking Economics Departments Worldwide on the Basis of PhD Placement (2005). Here is the abstract:

An objective ranking of economics departments worldwide in terms of graduate education is derived. The central idea is that the value of a department is the sum of the values of its PhD graduates, as reflected in the values of their current employing departments. The scores are thus derived as solutions to a linear system of simultaneous equations in the values. The sample includes the top fifty-four departments, the composition of which is determined endogenously using a criterion requiring a minimum of four placements in the departments comprising the sample. Two other related rankings are proposed, which place more emphasis on more recent faculty recruitments. The results point to a very high concentration in the economics PhD education market worldwide, confirming the dominance of the top U.S. departments, in particular of Harvard and M.I.T. Nevertheless, a modest de-concentration trend is under way. The rankings are in close agreement with the 1994 National Research Council survey ranking based on the perceived quality of PhD programs.

(Hat Tip: Paul Caron)The Top 10 economics departments by this measure are:

1. Harvard
2. MIT
3. Stanford
4. Princeton
5. Chicago
6. Cal-Berkeley
7. Yale
8. Northwestern
9. Oxford
10. London School of Economics

The Wall Street Journal conducted an interview with Milton Friedman four months before he passed away. Here is the interview.

Senators Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), incoming and outgoing Chairs of the Senate Finance Committee, yesterday introduced The Individual Alternative Minimum Tax Repeal Act of 2007:

* Press Release
* Text of Bill
* Floor Statement of Sen. Baucus

I hope this results of a real repeal of a tax and not another “soak the rich” scam.

The Wall Street Journal reported today that it would be a complete repeal. Of course, this will probably be a revenue-neutral move — they will probably raise taxes in some other area to keep taking from us.

Interesting article in the Washington Post: Old Money, New Money Flee France and Its Wealth Tax, by Molly Moore:
[A] sizable community of rich expatriate French [are being] driven out by the world’s highest tax bills on wealthy citizens. The exodus continues: On average, at least one millionaire leaves France every day to take up residence in more wealth-friendly nations, according to a government study. At a time when France is struggling to stay competitive in an increasingly integrated world, business leaders say the country can’t afford to make refugees of some of its most established business families. They include members of the Taittinger champagne empire, the Peugeot auto magnates and leading shareholders of dominant retailers Carrefour and Darty. Also going are members of a new generation of high-tech entrepreneurs….The wealth tax — officially called the solidarity tax — is collected on top of income, capital gains, inheritance and social security taxes. It’s part of the reason France consistently ranks at the top of Forbes magazine’s annual Tax Misery Index — a global listing of the most heavily taxed nations. Wealthy citizens’ tax bills can be higher than their incomes, according to tax analysts. President Jacques Chirac’s government attempted to rectify that disparity last year with changes intended to guarantee that no one would pay more than 60 percent of income in taxes. But many businesspeople say actual maximum tax rates still hover at around 72 percent.

Interesting conclusion to an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal:

[T]he best thing gay activists could do for themselves at the federal level would be to support repeal of the death tax, since under current law gay couples often lack inheritance rights. That would accomplish more than anything that will emerge from this week’s political spectacle over amending the Constitution.

Charles Adams, adjunct faculty of the Mises Institute, gives an interview of his outstanding book on the history of taxation. See it here.

He is referring to his excellent book, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization (Expanded 2nd edition).

The Pew Research Center has released “A Barometer of Modern Morals: Sex, Drugs, and the 1040″. Here are the results of a poll of 745 people, with the percentages of people classifying each behavior as morally wrong:

* 85% Married People Having an Affair
* 79% Not Reporting All Income on Taxes
* 61% Drinking Alcohol Excessively
* 52% Having an Abortion
* 50% Smoking Marijuana
* 50% Homosexual Behavior
* 43% Lying to Spare Someone’s Feelings
* 35% Sex Between Unmarried Adults
* 35% Gambling
* 32% Overeating

For a detailed view of the tax question, see here.

This shows more individuals need to read Rothbard.

Well, at least for her it was voluntary.

H&R Block has a link for a free download of their software DeductionPro. While this is last year’s version, it supports 2005 taxes – once installed, an update is available. Hopefully it will help you find tax deductions you didn’t know about.

Following up on last week’s post on the tax song “Taxes Are Best When You Pay Nothing At All”, the Tax Guru (a libertarian tax professional) has made available an mp3 recording of the Beatles’ The Tax Man (this link has the lyrics to the song), as performed by bluegrass group Nickel Creek on PBS’s Austin City Limits show. For a clip of the show, see here; to download the song for noncommercial use, click here.