Latest Articles

The Hayek Effect: The Political Consequences of Planned Austerity

May 17, 2012  •  The American

In 2010, Merriam-Webster's Dictionary named "austerity" as its "Word of the Year," noting that it had been the subject of more than 250,000 searches on its free website. This sudden flare-up of interest in austerity did not arise because large numbers of people suddenly decided to live like Trappist monks. Rather, it was owing to the austerity programs that the creditor nations of the European Union, led by Germany, had decided to impose on the EU debtor nations, such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. In return for a pledge to continue loaning the debtor nations more money, the creditor nations demanded that the debtors must in effect tighten their belts. This belt-tightening required slashing some of the government-provided benefits and social services that the citizens of the debtor nations have come to take for granted. It also took the form of higher taxes and lower wages.

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The Occupy Movement and the Communism of Everyday Life

May 7, 2012  •  The American

When the Occupy Wall Street movement began in 2011, it took as its motto the bracing claim: "We are the 99 percent." A year later, it is beginning to look more like the Occupy movement is simply another 1 percent, different of course from the 1 percent of the richest Americans that the movement set out to target, but no more representative of the average American than the likes of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. How did this happen?

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Science and the Republican Brain

April 30, 2012  •  The American

A new term of political opprobrium has been loosed upon the world: anti-science. Like many terms of abuse, it is easier to convey its meaning by an illustration than by a rigorous definition. For example, "If those damn Republicans weren't so anti-science, we might have a chance of dealing with global warming." Here's another example: "Those damn Republicans are so anti-science that they want to see creationism taught in schools."

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Why ObamaCare Has Proved a Hard Sell

April 9, 2012  •  The American

During a press conference on December 17, 1940, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt justified his highly controversial lend-lease program by offering a simple analogy. When your neighbor's house is on fire and he comes to you to borrow your garden hose, you don't say, "Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to pay me $15 dollars." You simply give him the garden hose and say, "I want my garden hose back after the fire is over."

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More than Just Broccoli
The Real Slippery Slope of ObamaCare's 'Must-Buy' Provision

March 28, 2012  •  The American

There is now general agreement that the U.S. Supreme Court will not try to duck the issue of whether ObamaCare is constitutional. Before oral hearings on Monday, there was speculation that the court might invoke the 1867 Anti-Injunction Act, arguing that no one could bring a suit against ObamaCare until the day arrived when someone was forced to pay the penalty for not purchasing health insurance. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, however, shrewdly noted that if ObamaCare worked as planned, there would never be a penalty imposed, in which case how could the penalty be construed as a means of raising revenue? More to the point: Unless ObamaCare was deliberately designed not to work, it could hardly be viewed as an attempt to tax American citizens.

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Books by Lee Harris