WEBVTT NOTE Freedom or Apocalypse 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.000 Well, it's been another year of lies in Washington, D.C. 2 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:08.000 But these days, they seem more brazen than ever. 3 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:12.000 Here are some from just the past few weeks. 4 00:00:12.000 --> 00:00:17.000 Robert Reich says that raising the minimum wage will help the poor. 5 00:00:17.000 --> 00:00:22.000 Alan Greenspan professes to be fighting inflation with all his might. 6 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:26.000 Bill Clinton says the era of big government is over. 7 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:32.600 and Bill Kristol's weekly standard agrees and takes credit for it. 8 00:00:32.600 --> 00:00:37.900 These examples illustrate Washington as a wonderland of distortions and deceptions. 9 00:00:37.900 --> 00:00:44.100 Let's examine, for example, the claim that we're living through a congressional revolution against big government. 10 00:00:44.100 --> 00:00:50.800 For a year, Washington has promised us, assured us, and pleaded with us to believe that it is so. 11 00:00:50.800 --> 00:00:53.500 There's no question that the people want it. 12 00:00:53.500 --> 00:00:58.500 But somehow the supply of revolution has fallen far short of the demand. 13 00:00:58.500 --> 00:01:04.500 Never has so much rhetorical hoopla surrounded so little political substance. 14 00:01:04.500 --> 00:01:10.500 This is a revolution. It is of the kind that fits Bertrand de Juvenal's classic description. 15 00:01:10.500 --> 00:01:18.500 It rends the air with denunciations of tyrants, yet raises up its own. 16 00:01:18.500 --> 00:01:26.500 The purpose of this revolution is to placate the people's hatred of the federal government, which grows more intense year by year. 17 00:01:26.500 --> 00:01:31.500 Indeed, this phony revolution is being conducted in classic Washington style. 18 00:01:31.500 --> 00:01:36.500 One party pretends to cut, the other pretends to panic. 19 00:01:36.500 --> 00:01:41.500 One party celebrates its victories, the other vows reprisals. 20 00:01:41.500 --> 00:01:44.500 But in the end, Leviathan grows and grows. 21 00:01:44.500 --> 00:01:58.500 Spending, taxing, debt all go up, and Washington holds its breath, hopes we will forget its past promises, and waits for the next election to distract us from our task. 22 00:01:58.500 --> 00:02:03.500 What can we do about the intellectual bankruptcy and political cowardice in Washington? 23 00:02:03.500 --> 00:02:07.500 Well, for one thing, we can expose their lies. 24 00:02:07.500 --> 00:02:12.500 The first step is to remember that this year, Leviathan was supposed to be slain. 25 00:02:12.500 --> 00:02:17.500 For more than four decades, the Republicans have begged for a majority in Congress. 26 00:02:17.500 --> 00:02:23.500 The absence of one was what supposedly kept the government big and the budget unbalanced. 27 00:02:23.500 --> 00:02:27.500 The voters gave the Republican Party a majority. Let's remember what was supposed to happen. 28 00:02:27.500 --> 00:02:33.500 The welfare state was to be overthrown. We were to get huge tax cuts and regulatory relief. 29 00:02:33.500 --> 00:02:40.500 The 10th Amendment would be enforced. There would be no more police state tactics as in Waco and Ruby Ridge. 30 00:02:40.500 --> 00:02:48.500 A year ago November, a Wall Street Journal columnist wrote that he fully expected federal deposit insurance and the SEC to be abolished. 31 00:02:48.500 --> 00:02:53.500 The same writer wrote that there was a slight chance the Fed itself would be terminated. 32 00:02:53.500 --> 00:03:01.500 What's more, in the glorious anti-government environment of November 1994, these did not seem like idle speculations. 33 00:03:01.500 --> 00:03:08.500 One year later, the Wall Street Journal has lowered its sights and is pretending as if they were never high to begin with. 34 00:03:08.500 --> 00:03:13.500 How fair is the revolution, an editorial asked on December 29th? 35 00:03:13.500 --> 00:03:16.500 Just fine, considering that its purpose was to, quote, 36 00:03:16.500 --> 00:03:21.500 inject some discipline in the welfare state. 37 00:03:21.500 --> 00:03:25.500 In judging Congress by the standard of the original revolutionary promise 38 00:03:25.500 --> 00:03:27.500 and not that truncated version, 39 00:03:27.500 --> 00:03:31.500 I'm not making the perfect the enemy of the good as some high-level Republicans 40 00:03:31.500 --> 00:03:34.500 have accused the Mises Institute of doing. 41 00:03:34.500 --> 00:03:37.500 No one is faulting Congress for not giving us a full loaf. 42 00:03:37.500 --> 00:03:42.740 Indeed, we'd be happy with just a slice, no matter how thin. 43 00:03:42.740 --> 00:03:46.740 But if we look at the facts, we see that there has been no progress towards dismantling government 44 00:03:46.740 --> 00:03:49.020 or making the people of this country freer. 45 00:03:49.020 --> 00:03:54.860 I wrote in a column in January 1995 that if next year's Congressional spending is higher 46 00:03:54.860 --> 00:03:57.860 than this year's, Congress will have failed. 47 00:03:57.860 --> 00:04:03.460 The reaction I received was that it was silly to even suggest that the budget would grow. 48 00:04:03.460 --> 00:04:07.780 But Murray and Rothbard saw problems developing in the first days after the November 1994 49 00:04:07.780 --> 00:04:12.140 election, when lame ducks in the House and Senate voted to implement the GATT Treaty and 50 00:04:12.140 --> 00:04:18.620 its World Trade Organization, even though the public rightly saw it as an insider deal. 51 00:04:18.620 --> 00:04:23.780 The Mises Institute worked very hard to expose that treaty and its cousin NAFTA as the essence 52 00:04:23.780 --> 00:04:29.180 of managed trade, while at the same time upholding the ideal of free trade. 53 00:04:29.180 --> 00:04:32.820 These treaties have of course exacted a horrible price. 54 00:04:32.820 --> 00:04:36.380 For example, one year ago this month, a Congressional leadership conspired with the White House 55 00:04:36.380 --> 00:04:41.300 to commit one of the greatest financial crimes of the last half century, the 50 billion dollar 56 00:04:41.300 --> 00:04:45.580 bailout of the Mexican government and the banks and corporations whose fate was linked 57 00:04:45.580 --> 00:04:46.580 to the peso. 58 00:04:46.580 --> 00:04:52.380 It was a consequence of two years of massive peso inflation, encouraged by the U.S. to 59 00:04:52.380 --> 00:04:53.380 pass NAFTA. 60 00:04:53.380 --> 00:04:58.620 The U.S. government knew at least eight months in advance that the peso was going to be devalued, 61 00:04:58.620 --> 00:04:59.620 but did nothing. 62 00:04:59.620 --> 00:05:07.620 Moreover, the bailout itself was conducted in secret, greased with drug money, laced with political corruption, and even linked to outright murders. 63 00:05:07.620 --> 00:05:14.620 Yet to hear the U.S. government tell the story of the Mexican economy in NAFTA, things are better and better every day, in every way. 64 00:05:14.620 --> 00:05:19.620 What this really means is that the profits of Goldman Sachs are at historic highs. 65 00:05:19.620 --> 00:05:26.620 This fiscal year, total government spending will be up at least $53 billion over last year. 66 00:05:26.620 --> 00:05:30.620 And that's by the estimates provided by the Congress itself and its own plans. 67 00:05:30.620 --> 00:05:34.620 No programs, departments or functions of the Federal Government have been abolished. 68 00:05:34.620 --> 00:05:37.620 None have even been seriously challenged. 69 00:05:37.620 --> 00:05:41.620 The few programs that have experienced marginal cuts are more than swamped 70 00:05:41.620 --> 00:05:44.620 by the programs that have experienced real increases. 71 00:05:44.620 --> 00:05:48.620 Even under this Congress, the government's grip grows tighter by the day. 72 00:05:48.620 --> 00:05:54.620 The government is still destroying the American economy, society, culture and way of life. 73 00:05:54.620 --> 00:05:59.820 We're still ruled by the largest government in the history of the world. 74 00:05:59.820 --> 00:06:04.380 No government has ever presumed to spend so much, regulate so much, or tax so much, but 75 00:06:04.380 --> 00:06:07.220 somehow it's never enough. 76 00:06:07.220 --> 00:06:12.100 The congressional leadership blames the president, but that's a suspicious charge on the face 77 00:06:12.100 --> 00:06:13.100 of it. 78 00:06:13.100 --> 00:06:18.720 The truth is that even with today's unconstitutional executive branch tyranny, the government cannot 79 00:06:18.720 --> 00:06:21.780 spend one dime without congressional approval. 80 00:06:21.780 --> 00:06:26.780 Congress, particularly its leadership, must take ultimate responsibility. 81 00:06:26.780 --> 00:06:30.780 The freshmen did their best, their best, but the problem goes much deeper. 82 00:06:30.780 --> 00:06:37.780 In private, several of the best freshmen have admitted that their worst vote of last year was the one that made Mr. Gingrich the Speaker. 83 00:06:37.780 --> 00:06:44.780 Some in the leadership have reacted to Institute criticism by blaming the President for striking down good legislation. 84 00:06:44.780 --> 00:06:50.780 In fact, this is not the case. Mr. Clinton's most famous veto was of the Congressional Welfare Bill. 85 00:06:50.780 --> 00:06:55.180 as its supporters said it was supposed to revolutionize the welfare state 86 00:06:55.180 --> 00:06:58.900 but not even the most objectionable parts of the welfare state were challenged 87 00:06:58.900 --> 00:07:03.660 not even AFDC, the program that subsidizes illegitimate children was touched 88 00:07:03.660 --> 00:07:08.820 the republican leadership backed off even minor changes like family caps 89 00:07:08.820 --> 00:07:12.020 instead of getting rid of programs the final bill merely created 90 00:07:12.020 --> 00:07:17.020 a fancy financial technique for channeling more money to republican states 91 00:07:17.020 --> 00:07:20.040 meanwhile they claim this bill was returning welfare to the states 92 00:07:20.040 --> 00:07:25.660 in a Federalist fashion. All it actually did was make state bureaucracies even more dependent 93 00:07:25.660 --> 00:07:32.380 on Washington. Central control remains untouched in the area of environmental socialism. Just 94 00:07:32.380 --> 00:07:37.420 this week we received a call from a gentleman who inherited 30 acres of family property 95 00:07:37.420 --> 00:07:42.860 near Louisville, Kentucky. Then he discovered, unbeknownst to the family, that two years 96 00:07:42.860 --> 00:07:49.200 ago the Feds had flown over it in a helicopter and declared it a federally protected wetland. 97 00:07:49.200 --> 00:07:53.060 That means it has an effective net worth of zero, although, of course, he's still responsible 98 00:07:53.060 --> 00:07:55.800 for paying the property taxes. 99 00:07:55.800 --> 00:07:59.940 With the stroke of a pen, the federal government was able to, in effect, nationalize property 100 00:07:59.940 --> 00:08:03.880 that had been in his generation, excuse me, in his family for generations. 101 00:08:03.880 --> 00:08:08.400 As he told us, he didn't believe such a thing was possible in America. 102 00:08:08.400 --> 00:08:12.520 His only hope was that the Republicans would do something about the wetlands laws. 103 00:08:12.520 --> 00:08:15.720 But after months of calls, he realized that our complaints, he said, as aired in the free 104 00:08:15.720 --> 00:08:20.720 If every market were correct, the Republican leadership is not interested in stopping this injustice. 105 00:08:20.720 --> 00:08:25.720 If you ask this gentleman what's wrong in Washington, he'll tell you in a word, everything. 106 00:08:25.720 --> 00:08:32.720 But the focus of his anger is Mr. Gingrich, who should have defunded the wetlands police on the first day of Congress. 107 00:08:32.720 --> 00:08:36.720 In many ways, Mr. Gingrich is the liberals' favorite conservative. 108 00:08:36.720 --> 00:08:40.720 He's a strong partisan, but not an opponent of state power. 109 00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:46.720 He was never very good as a congressman and his national taxpayers union rating was always poor. 110 00:08:46.720 --> 00:08:52.720 As speaker, he's done far more damage as the mastermind behind the Mexican bailout. 111 00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:56.720 He's kept the Brady Bill and the assault weapons ban off the congressional table. 112 00:08:56.720 --> 00:09:02.720 He refuses to discuss any defunding of international agencies like the IMF or the World Bank or the United Nations. 113 00:09:02.720 --> 00:09:07.720 He opposed strenuously an amendment to defund the Export-Import Bank. 114 00:09:07.720 --> 00:09:13.720 And when several freshmen recently voted against reopening the government, he canceled campaign appearances for them. 115 00:09:13.720 --> 00:09:18.720 Now I understand this view defies the conventional wisdom as presented in the media. 116 00:09:18.720 --> 00:09:23.720 But the conventional wisdom is also wrong when it comes to the great budget debate that we've been going through. 117 00:09:23.720 --> 00:09:29.720 One side says it wants to balance the budget in nine years. The other side says seven years. 118 00:09:29.720 --> 00:09:35.720 This is like a debate between two alcoholics and when they should stop drinking. Seven or nine years in the future. 119 00:09:35.720 --> 00:09:39.720 Certainly such an argument can be fierce without being serious. 120 00:09:39.720 --> 00:09:43.720 When it comes to the budget, neither side has got any credibility. 121 00:09:43.720 --> 00:09:47.720 Neither this President nor this Congress can control any budget but this year's. 122 00:09:47.720 --> 00:09:53.720 The Congress certainly can't bind a future Congress. This White House can't bind a future administration. 123 00:09:53.720 --> 00:09:59.720 And Mrs. Clinton and Gingrich are free to, quote, change their minds on any solemn agreement reached today. 124 00:09:59.720 --> 00:10:04.720 Even sillier are the economic assumptions that both sides are using to estimate future budgets. 125 00:10:04.720 --> 00:10:09.720 Nothing has been more thoroughly discredited in the last half century than economic forecasting. 126 00:10:09.720 --> 00:10:14.720 Mises tells us why. There are no constants in human action. 127 00:10:14.720 --> 00:10:18.720 We cannot know precise magnitudes of any economic data in the future. 128 00:10:18.720 --> 00:10:24.720 Yet, as usual, economists in the service of politicians pretend to do what no mortal man can do. 129 00:10:24.720 --> 00:10:29.720 If the goal is to cut the budget, and indeed it should be, it should be cut right now. 130 00:10:29.720 --> 00:10:32.720 At the very least, we could freeze the budget. 131 00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:40.720 But for heaven sakes, let's not spend any more time pretending to balance the budget at some point in the future while running deficits today. 132 00:10:40.720 --> 00:10:47.720 We could fret a similar problem on tax reform. The Republicans are making huge claims for themselves here as well. 133 00:10:47.720 --> 00:10:58.720 They say they'll defang the IRS, make the tax code simple, eliminate the horrible burden that we all bear, reduce the incentive for cheating, and the people cheer their every word. 134 00:10:58.720 --> 00:11:05.720 But listen carefully, what they have emphatically not said is that they will lower rates or collect less revenue. 135 00:11:05.720 --> 00:11:11.720 And so long as the government attempts to extract 1.7 trillion dollars in private wealth from the economy every year, 136 00:11:11.720 --> 00:11:17.720 the tax code cannot be anything but coercive, complex and counterproductive. 137 00:11:17.720 --> 00:11:23.720 The Mises Institute was one of the very few economic organizations in the country to join pro-family groups 138 00:11:23.720 --> 00:11:26.720 in supporting the attempt to raise the child deduction. 139 00:11:26.720 --> 00:11:29.720 At least it would have allowed people to keep a little more of what they earn. 140 00:11:29.720 --> 00:11:37.720 Similarly, right now, we're one of the few economic organizations to support the home mortgage and charitable tax deductions while still favoring lower taxes. 141 00:11:37.720 --> 00:11:43.720 Many politicians and economists say these deductions cause distortions in the economy. 142 00:11:43.720 --> 00:11:46.720 But it's hard to take that line of thinking seriously. 143 00:11:46.720 --> 00:11:53.720 These same people prove remarkably shy about pointing out the economic distortions caused by the taxes that the government collects. 144 00:11:53.720 --> 00:12:04.920 The Mises Institute defends any and all deductions for a simple reason. 145 00:12:04.920 --> 00:12:08.560 Deductions allow some private property to remain in private hands. 146 00:12:08.560 --> 00:12:13.320 Private property is the basis of free enterprise, which in turn is the basis of prosperity. 147 00:12:13.320 --> 00:12:18.240 It can never be a cure for economic stagnation to tax people more than they are already being 148 00:12:18.240 --> 00:12:22.840 taxed, which is what repealing deductions really does. 149 00:12:22.840 --> 00:12:26.560 Other tax reform proposals that get us off the track are schemes like the flat tax and 150 00:12:26.560 --> 00:12:28.760 the national sales tax. 151 00:12:28.760 --> 00:12:32.800 So long as these are proposed as new schemes to collect the same amount of revenue or sometimes 152 00:12:32.800 --> 00:12:35.560 even more, they are steps in the wrong direction. 153 00:12:35.560 --> 00:12:39.040 There's no inherent virtue to flatness as such. 154 00:12:39.040 --> 00:12:43.320 The social security tax, for example, is flat and no one enjoys paying it. 155 00:12:43.320 --> 00:12:48.280 And the national sales tax would penalize people who have worked and saved and tax them all 156 00:12:48.280 --> 00:12:51.560 over again on those savings when they spend them. 157 00:12:51.560 --> 00:12:57.560 If our target is more economic freedom, there is no way to achieve it except by cutting taxes and cutting government. 158 00:12:57.560 --> 00:13:02.560 Freedom is the one way out, and all these policy detours merely distract from the fact. 159 00:13:02.560 --> 00:13:05.560 The Republican leadership doesn't want us to think this way. 160 00:13:05.560 --> 00:13:10.560 So long as the Congress is not working from a consistent intellectual framework, it will be prone to gimmicks. 161 00:13:10.560 --> 00:13:14.560 And these gimmicks can be dangerous. 162 00:13:14.560 --> 00:13:16.560 I'll give you one example. 163 00:13:16.560 --> 00:13:23.560 The Republican budget proposals builds in assumptions that the government will collect more revenue than present trends suggested will. 164 00:13:23.560 --> 00:13:30.560 The key to this is a new law that allows the IRS to contract out its tax collections to private law firms. 165 00:13:30.560 --> 00:13:34.560 This is the ultimate perversion of the idea of privatization. 166 00:13:34.560 --> 00:13:40.560 There are certain functions, and certainly tax collection is among them, that we do not want to have privatized. 167 00:13:40.560 --> 00:13:49.560 In many ways, governmentally blessed and empowered private coercion can be far worse than plain government coercion because, of course, it can be far more effective. 168 00:13:49.560 --> 00:13:56.560 If the Republicans wanted to do the right thing, the first good step back to freedom would be to simply cut taxes, by any amount. 169 00:13:56.560 --> 00:14:09.560 But if we abolish the income taxes, of course we would like to see, other taxes would still raise a tremendous amount of money, $760 billion, which is about the size of the entire 1982 budget. 170 00:14:09.560 --> 00:14:14.560 The idea of getting rid of the income tax and not replacing it is of course ruled out entirely. 171 00:14:14.560 --> 00:14:21.560 Let's take the Republicans off the hot seat and talk for a moment about the lying socialist who inhabits the White House. 172 00:14:21.560 --> 00:14:27.560 The head one. 173 00:14:27.560 --> 00:14:33.560 Although Hillary was just here in San Francisco last night, you may have seen the papers. 174 00:14:33.560 --> 00:15:03.520 In a State of the Union address, Mr. Clinton told us that we've entered the era of small 175 00:15:03.520 --> 00:15:08.520 and the dollar government, which has to be one of the least credible statements ever uttered by any president. 176 00:15:08.520 --> 00:15:18.520 He even refuted it himself by proposing to create four new giveaway programs, expand three old programs, add three new regulatory bills, and vastly increase federal police power. 177 00:15:18.520 --> 00:15:25.520 He also called for an increase in the minimum wage as a blatant stop to labor unions who want to shut low-wage employment out of the market. 178 00:15:25.520 --> 00:15:32.520 And again, he proposed to socialize the medical industry, this time in the form of severe insurance regulations. 179 00:15:32.520 --> 00:15:38.520 Given the logic of interventionism, we would have Hillary Care by the end of the century, if his plan were adopted. 180 00:15:38.520 --> 00:15:45.520 Mr. Clinton also told us the economy is the best we've seen in 30 years. But which economy is he talking about? 181 00:15:45.520 --> 00:15:50.520 In the American economy, consumer confidence is at the lowest that it's been in more than two years. 182 00:15:50.520 --> 00:15:54.520 Retailers at a terrible holiday season and unemployment is on the rise. 183 00:15:54.520 --> 00:15:59.520 The Fed continues an attempt to forestall recession with short-term interest rate cuts, 184 00:15:59.520 --> 00:16:15.520 On the inflation front, the Commodity Research Bureau Index is at its highest level in five years. Gold is above 400 and December registered a wholesale inflation rate of 7%. 185 00:16:15.520 --> 00:16:26.520 There's no basis for ruling out a serious return of price increases this year, but even at a 3% rate, which the media call non-inflationary, prices double every 25 years. 186 00:16:26.520 --> 00:16:33.520 Even if theft is stretched out over a period of time, it's still theft and it still creates the business cycle. 187 00:16:33.520 --> 00:16:39.520 The experts assure us that if we take out food and energy, the inflation rate is not so bad. 188 00:16:39.520 --> 00:16:44.520 I'll agree to that once people stop eating, driving and heating their homes. 189 00:16:44.520 --> 00:16:49.520 It's instructive to look at the financial habits of one member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. 190 00:16:49.520 --> 00:16:54.520 In December, Lawrence Lindsay was turned down for a credit card by Toys R Us. 191 00:16:54.520 --> 00:17:08.520 After he went public and complained that the computer selection methods that turned him down were actually racist, the company quickly issued him a card with a $15,000 line of credit, which is a lot of toys. 192 00:17:08.520 --> 00:17:21.520 But in the course of the controversy this generated, we learned that Mr. Lindsay has a great big mortgage, a big second mortgage, an overdraft credit line on his checking account, three major credit cards, and no savings. 193 00:17:21.520 --> 00:17:51.520 Mr. Lindsay refused to show me his credit history. It was hilarious. He was shocked that he was being asked for such a thing, saying that it was private, but on the other hand, he'd made his credit standing a matter of public record, or what he claimed about his credit standing, and used it to try to advance socialist policy, so it seemed to me that we should be able to get a look at his actual credit rate and see whether maybe Toys R Us had a point in their original turndown. But even without seeing that, I think we can see why 194 00:17:51.520 --> 00:17:58.520 and as everyone who studies inflation knows, price increases benefit debtors of the expensive savers. 195 00:17:58.520 --> 00:18:03.520 So Mr. Lindsay's credit status doesn't exactly inspire confidence in the future of the dollar. 196 00:18:03.520 --> 00:18:07.520 Both parties have an even better solution to the problem of perpetual inflation. 197 00:18:07.520 --> 00:18:13.520 However, they've agreed to redefine the consumer price index so that it shows a lower inflation rate. 198 00:18:13.520 --> 00:18:17.520 They say the purpose is to reduce the cost of living adjustments paid out. 199 00:18:17.520 --> 00:18:23.520 They don't tell us, however, that the additional purposes increase taxes by reducing the pace of indexation. 200 00:18:23.520 --> 00:18:31.520 But if these budget negotiators had any integrity, they would simply propose to eliminate these so-called cost of living adjustments, 201 00:18:31.520 --> 00:18:38.520 because they actually give federal employees and others higher payments than the so-called cost of living. 202 00:18:38.520 --> 00:18:41.520 Or even better, just eliminate these programs. 203 00:18:41.520 --> 00:18:45.520 But so much for the short-term economic picture. Let's talk about the long-term. 204 00:18:45.520 --> 00:18:54.520 Median wages and incomes have been falling since the final elimination of the gold standard in 1971 and the pace of decline accelerated in 1995. 205 00:18:54.520 --> 00:19:00.520 The group hit hardest as young white men whose wages have fallen as much as 8% in the last six years. 206 00:19:00.520 --> 00:19:06.520 25 years ago, most women with children could choose not to have a professional career if they did not desire one. 207 00:19:06.520 --> 00:19:09.520 The economy could support whole families living on one income. 208 00:19:09.520 --> 00:19:11.520 Today, this is the exception. 209 00:19:11.520 --> 00:19:15.520 And the effect of this change has been a virtual social revolution. 210 00:19:15.520 --> 00:19:18.520 Yet I received a press release the other day that said, quote, 211 00:19:18.520 --> 00:19:22.520 standards of living are rising, sixty experts say. 212 00:19:22.520 --> 00:19:26.520 Well, if it were really true, of course, we wouldn't need experts to tell us. 213 00:19:26.520 --> 00:19:30.520 It turns out that the study has a way of explaining away every one of our current difficulties. 214 00:19:30.520 --> 00:19:34.520 For example, the study argues that while it's true that wages and incomes are going down, 215 00:19:34.520 --> 00:19:38.520 job benefits are going up, so on that we're all richer. 216 00:19:38.520 --> 00:19:42.600 What are these alleged benefits? Well, unfunded social security liabilities, 217 00:19:42.600 --> 00:19:48.040 unfunded Medicare liabilities, unfunded pension liabilities, along with health 218 00:19:48.040 --> 00:19:51.960 care as prices higher and higher while its value is lower and lower and service 219 00:19:51.960 --> 00:19:57.480 less responsive, because of government of course. Truth is very different from 220 00:19:57.480 --> 00:20:00.960 what the experts are paid to propagate. The American middle class is being 221 00:20:00.960 --> 00:20:05.400 strangled alive by taxes and wealthy Americans suffer from taxes that are as 222 00:20:05.400 --> 00:20:14.160 The first time in our nation's history we are developing a brain drain problem in peacetime. 223 00:20:14.160 --> 00:20:17.900 Wealthy Americans are leaving the country and even renouncing their citizenship to escape 224 00:20:17.900 --> 00:20:24.800 confiscatory inheritance taxes, capital gains taxes, income taxes and high labor costs. 225 00:20:24.800 --> 00:20:27.080 The phenomenon should be a wake-up call. 226 00:20:27.080 --> 00:20:30.840 A country that runs out its wealthiest and most successful citizens is on the road to 227 00:20:30.840 --> 00:20:32.080 economic death. 228 00:20:32.080 --> 00:20:43.080 Instead, the President, Congress and some presidential candidates have toyed with the idea of limiting the amount of money expatriates can take out of the country, an idea only a despot could support or enforce. 229 00:20:44.080 --> 00:20:48.080 The silent killer of inflation and the inflation machine at the Federal Reserve are, of course, still with us. 230 00:20:49.080 --> 00:20:52.080 FED has done more to destroy the standard of living than any other institution. 231 00:20:53.080 --> 00:21:01.080 The FED continues to prop up big government, prop up governments abroad, manipulate currency markets and loot the nation's pool of saved wealth. 232 00:21:02.080 --> 00:21:07.580 The Fed is the central government's lifeblood and also its most feared, beloved, and respected bureaucracy. 233 00:21:07.580 --> 00:21:14.080 Rush Limbaugh is so sensitive on the subject that he won't take any calls from anyone critical of the Federal Reserve. 234 00:21:14.080 --> 00:21:20.580 The leadership of both parties have sworn their devotion to the Fed, the biggest enemy the middle class has ever had. 235 00:21:20.580 --> 00:21:27.080 The only voices, aside from ours, raised in opposition to central banking are those of a few principled freshmen. 236 00:21:27.080 --> 00:21:35.080 But given the intellectual environment in Washington, this, of course, is a sure path to getting yourself labeled as part of the lunatic right-wing fringe. 237 00:21:35.080 --> 00:21:41.080 When I hear that label applied to anyone, I always assume that they're making good sense. 238 00:21:41.080 --> 00:21:45.080 What is the point of all this taxing, spending, inflating and manipulating? 239 00:21:45.080 --> 00:21:50.080 Well, to fund sky-high budgets for welfare and military spending. 240 00:21:50.080 --> 00:22:00.080 The purpose of the welfare, warfare state is not defense and charity, but a good living for the huge class of parasites that has grown up around the transfer process. 241 00:22:01.080 --> 00:22:11.080 The pretense of charity and defense are nothing more than a propaganda cover to make the transfer appear to be in the common good, even while it destroys capital and entrepreneurs the basis of future prosperity. 242 00:22:12.080 --> 00:22:17.080 The survival of military, industry, socialism in the post-Cold War world is particularly despicable. 243 00:22:17.080 --> 00:22:30.080 Bill Clinton got into this war in hopes of shoring up his support among the public. He 244 00:22:30.080 --> 00:22:34.180 based his hopes on past data, showing that presidents are hated less when our troops 245 00:22:34.180 --> 00:22:39.120 are involved in conflicts overseas. At the same time, he sensed that the public's tolerance 246 00:22:39.120 --> 00:22:43.400 for international wars is not what it once was. 247 00:22:43.400 --> 00:22:46.880 Some people say there's nothing at stake for America in what happens in Bosnia. I wish 248 00:22:46.880 --> 00:22:53.880 Of course this is true, but anytime the U.S. government is acting in the manner of an empire, it diminishes American liberty here at home. 249 00:22:53.880 --> 00:23:01.880 Just last March, the White House issued a presidential order penalizing companies who use replacement workers instead of union goons to fulfill federal contracts. 250 00:23:01.880 --> 00:23:08.880 Federal appeals court just voided this order. Robert Reich blasted back, relying on the war motif. 251 00:23:08.880 --> 00:23:14.880 The president, he said, has the authority to make sure that taxpayers get the quality of goods and services they deserve. 252 00:23:14.880 --> 00:23:19.600 We don't want American servicemen and women in Bosnia driving around in tires made by 253 00:23:19.600 --> 00:23:23.640 replacement workers. 254 00:23:23.640 --> 00:23:28.160 Thus in his mind we are supposed to socialize the American labor force at home to prevent 255 00:23:28.160 --> 00:23:31.160 flat tires in Bosnia. 256 00:23:31.160 --> 00:23:34.240 That's the way empire works and it's why the framers and every great western thinker 257 00:23:34.240 --> 00:23:40.960 from Augustin to Rothbard emphasize the importance of peace to the preservation of liberty. 258 00:23:40.960 --> 00:23:44.080 Righteous remarks about tires in Bosnia is no different in substance from the thousands 259 00:23:44.080 --> 00:23:54.080 by liberals that somehow we are all morally obligated to surrender our bank accounts to help any inner city child who grows up without the right level of self-esteem and therefore is mugging people. 260 00:23:54.080 --> 00:24:04.080 Both views follow from the assumption that the Federal Government is in charge, properly in charge at home and abroad, and that the idea of liberty is outdated and unworkable. 261 00:24:04.080 --> 00:24:12.080 Yet the system of propaganda and lies designed to put a gloss on all forms of Federal tyranny is not working as well as it once did. 262 00:24:12.080 --> 00:24:17.800 In 1964, three of every four Americans said they trusted Washington to do the right thing. 263 00:24:17.800 --> 00:24:24.800 Today, fewer than one in five Americans say that, but the percentage is connected to government in some way, by the way. 264 00:24:24.800 --> 00:24:31.800 I said this data not because I think the polls should determine policy, but to explain why the political class is in such a panic. 265 00:24:31.800 --> 00:24:36.300 The government no longer consent to being ruled by the largest government in world history. 266 00:24:36.300 --> 00:24:40.300 Americans know in their heart that something has gone very wrong. 267 00:24:40.300 --> 00:24:47.300 And of course, in blaming the government, they are not scapegoating, but making a rational deduction from the evidence. 268 00:24:47.300 --> 00:24:54.300 When Mr. Clinton said we were doing better than 30 years ago, perhaps he had in mind Capitol Hill's current economic boom. 269 00:24:54.300 --> 00:25:02.300 Construction workers are in the process of building the second largest bureaucratic building in Washington history, and by the way, in the history of the world. 270 00:25:02.300 --> 00:25:09.300 Only the Pentagon exceeds it in size. It will house many thousands employed in lifetime jobs to rule over us. 271 00:25:09.300 --> 00:25:16.300 It's called the Ronald Reagan Building, in honor of the last president who proclaimed that the era of big government was over, 272 00:25:16.300 --> 00:25:22.300 and then doubled the size of the welfare state, added a cabinet department and raised our taxes six times. 273 00:25:22.300 --> 00:25:27.300 Having the government shut for weeks at a time brought home a very important truth to the American people, 274 00:25:27.300 --> 00:25:32.300 and reminds them why their voting patterns have turned decisively against Washington. 275 00:25:32.300 --> 00:25:37.300 The truth is that the civics techs were lying to us when they said that under a democracy, we are the government. 276 00:25:37.300 --> 00:25:43.300 The American people discovered that when the government shut down, life went on pretty much the way it always had. 277 00:25:43.300 --> 00:25:48.300 They didn't feel the government's pain, although of course the middle classes continue to feel their own pain. 278 00:25:48.300 --> 00:25:54.300 During the budget battle, Clinton was reduced to warning, as he did in a radio address, that if the government didn't reopen, 279 00:25:54.300 --> 00:26:00.300 the nation would soon be threatened by poison water, wild outbreaks of disease, and a deadly crime wave. 280 00:26:00.300 --> 00:26:02.300 Although, we'll say that sounds like today. 281 00:26:02.300 --> 00:26:13.300 Of course, we didn't get poisoned water, but the worst consequence of the government shutdown was that many of the nation's parks, museums and monuments were closed, and that proved to be an inconvenience. 282 00:26:13.300 --> 00:26:26.300 But this time more people saw through the fraud. If there is a public demand to visit these places, then why not just let them be run by private money, as for example, Mount Vernon, George Washington's home is. It did not close. 283 00:26:26.300 --> 00:26:29.800 The hysteria over the Vermeer exhibit at the National Gallery proved the point. 284 00:26:29.800 --> 00:26:34.800 The government took great joy in shutting down an exhibit where people were lined up around the block to get in. 285 00:26:34.800 --> 00:26:39.800 The government may have thought that this would show the public how much the nation relies on the government. 286 00:26:39.800 --> 00:26:42.800 Well, it didn't. Could it seem to be more preposterous? 287 00:26:42.800 --> 00:26:48.800 People coming from all over the country to see a beautiful art exhibit, but despite huge demand, the government refusing to let them in. 288 00:26:48.800 --> 00:26:52.300 How different a government bureaucracy is from the private sector. 289 00:26:52.300 --> 00:26:57.300 A business strives to get consumers in the door to purchase its products and services, 290 00:26:57.300 --> 00:27:03.300 while the government holds its consumers hostage for more money for the ruling regime. 291 00:27:03.300 --> 00:27:07.300 The message of the Vermeer exhibit backfired in a safe phase. 292 00:27:07.300 --> 00:27:13.300 The government decided to allow a private foundation to run the exhibit and open it up. 293 00:27:13.300 --> 00:27:18.300 Unfortunately, not all of the government's bad effects disappear when the government shuts down. 294 00:27:18.300 --> 00:27:29.300 As a result of civil rights laws, lawyers in the private sector have been enlisted as the government's private enforcement army, bringing suits against any business that dares not to obey the discrimination police. 295 00:27:29.300 --> 00:27:42.300 In a recent case of enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act, the nuttiest civil rights law in American history, a morgue was forbidden from charging a premium to handle the cadavers of people who had died of AIDS. 296 00:27:42.300 --> 00:27:49.300 No discrimination against corpses that had carried deadly diseases. 297 00:27:49.300 --> 00:27:54.300 Presumably next time we'll have to hire them and rent them apartments too. 298 00:27:54.300 --> 00:28:01.300 This is just one of tens of thousands of cases of ADA enforcement that defy the most basic notions of common sense. 299 00:28:01.300 --> 00:28:05.300 The Denny's Restaurant case is another tragic example of civil rights socialism. 300 00:28:05.300 --> 00:28:09.300 The company was mugged, stripped, humiliated and looted of hundreds of millions of dollars 301 00:28:09.300 --> 00:28:24.300 The government didn't even need to assist directly. Civil rights socialism works on autopilot so long as there are lawyers malicious enough to enrich themselves by bankrupting American companies through the courts. 302 00:28:24.300 --> 00:28:36.300 Here's the background of the Denny's case. In early 1993, six routed government agents went into a crowded Denny's at noon in Maryland and ordered food. Their orders didn't arrive in a time frame that met their approval. 303 00:28:36.300 --> 00:28:43.300 Discrimination, of course, as I'm sure you all think when you don't get served quickly enough in a Denny's or a similar kind of restaurant. 304 00:28:43.300 --> 00:28:50.300 But because they were black and well connected, they went to the press and the Justice Department, and the crimes of Denny's were quickly international news. 305 00:28:50.300 --> 00:28:59.300 An Oakland, California lawyer read the papers and began to elicit other anecdotes, and sure enough, the tales of criminality began rolling in. 306 00:28:59.300 --> 00:29:03.300 A black woman's hamburger was overcooked bigotry. 307 00:29:03.300 --> 00:29:09.300 Black teenagers were asked to prepay for a meal after skipping out on their check several nights before. 308 00:29:09.300 --> 00:29:11.300 Racism. 309 00:29:11.300 --> 00:29:15.300 Denny's settled these initial suits for an astounding $34.8 million. 310 00:29:15.300 --> 00:29:19.300 Then the NAACP stepped in to grab its pound of flesh. 311 00:29:19.300 --> 00:29:26.300 It immediately demanded negotiations with Denny's, and more than a year later, Denny's announced another agreement, this time much more costly. 312 00:29:26.300 --> 00:29:30.300 The parent company agreed to never let black employment fall below 20%, 313 00:29:30.300 --> 00:29:43.300 To raise the percentage of black managers to 12% to give, and I mean give, 47 restaurants to new black owners and to buy a minimum of 12% of its food and other products from black owned businesses. 314 00:29:43.300 --> 00:29:52.300 These free restaurants went, of course, to pals of the NAACP leadership who undoubtedly expressed their thanks in concrete ways to that leadership. 315 00:29:52.300 --> 00:29:57.980 Leadership, and to prevent more restaurant races than the NAACP said they would enforce 316 00:29:57.980 --> 00:30:02.420 the agreement with random visits and the threat of pickets and boycotts. 317 00:30:02.420 --> 00:30:06.780 Then with the court's permission, the original suit was broadened to the fabled class action 318 00:30:06.780 --> 00:30:07.780 status. 319 00:30:07.780 --> 00:30:12.260 Plaintiff's lawyers placed ads in all the nation's newspapers inviting even more litigants. 320 00:30:12.260 --> 00:30:18.100 They looked for blacks who felt they had to wait too long to be seated, segregation. 321 00:30:18.100 --> 00:30:21.940 Blacks who felt the service was too slow, apartheid, and blacks whose food wasn't cooked 322 00:30:21.940 --> 00:30:24.940 To Their Looking, To Their Liking, Slavery 323 00:30:24.940 --> 00:30:28.940 Toll-free number was provided for anyone who claimed that one or more of these hate crimes had happened to him. 324 00:30:28.940 --> 00:30:37.940 In the end, the attorneys rounded up 294,537 plaintiffs, each of whom recently got a check in the mail. 325 00:30:37.940 --> 00:30:42.940 Then his reputation had been dragged through the mud, its property looted, its management forced to beg for mercy 326 00:30:42.940 --> 00:30:46.940 from the equality police and the bitter, hate-filled lobbies they serve. 327 00:30:46.940 --> 00:30:56.940 Then his reputation had been dragged through the mud, its property looted, its management forced to beg for mercy from the equality police and the bitter hate-filled lobbies they serve. 328 00:30:56.940 --> 00:31:00.940 When this kind of thing can happen to a great American business, it's a very dark day. 329 00:31:00.940 --> 00:31:10.940 So long as this episode, which so far as I know has never been condemned or even criticized by any mainstream conservative, can take place in this country, there is no free enterprise and there is no freedom. 330 00:31:10.940 --> 00:31:15.580 of Freedom. Any company anywhere can be held hostage and looted with impunity so long as 331 00:31:15.580 --> 00:31:20.360 the lawyer is fighting on behalf of socialist causes. And there have been no steps whatsoever 332 00:31:20.360 --> 00:31:25.060 in Congress to improve the situation. The only way to end this kind of mass theft is 333 00:31:25.060 --> 00:31:29.160 to end the ability of the central state to enforce the right of trespass against private 334 00:31:29.160 --> 00:31:34.180 property. That's why the Mises Institute steadfastly holds out as the only solution 335 00:31:34.180 --> 00:31:39.180 consistent with private property and the freedom of association, the repeal of the 1964 Civil 336 00:31:39.180 --> 00:31:43.380 Act, and its subsequent amendments in the abolition of the Equal Employment Opportunity 337 00:31:43.380 --> 00:31:48.260 Commission as vicious infringements on the rights of every property owner. 338 00:31:48.260 --> 00:31:52.100 Every year, the cost of affirmative action and civil rights enforcement could be as high 339 00:31:52.100 --> 00:31:54.540 as several hundred billion dollars. 340 00:31:54.540 --> 00:31:58.460 As this example illustrates, the real burden of government goes way beyond the 47 percent 341 00:31:58.460 --> 00:32:01.660 of the economy that it loots in cash every year. 342 00:32:01.660 --> 00:32:05.740 The burden also extends to the borrowing that finances the federal deficit, the hundreds 343 00:32:05.740 --> 00:32:13.740 The millions of billions spent on such stupid programs as asbestos removal and the trillion or so dollars lost every year by the dictates of the regulatory state. 344 00:32:14.740 --> 00:32:21.740 As Austrian School economists have always emphasized, the largest cost of interventionism is not what we can see and calculate directly. 345 00:32:21.740 --> 00:32:29.740 The cost that must concern us the most is the prosperity we would have experienced but will never experience as a result of the interventionist state. 346 00:32:29.740 --> 00:32:40.740 Mainstream economists have been recently debating why it is that the so-called information revolution has failed to increase our standard of living, or even caused the national output to increase. 347 00:32:41.740 --> 00:32:46.740 After all, the Industrial Revolution caused two centuries of increases in the standard of living. 348 00:32:47.740 --> 00:32:51.740 Economists debate and debate this question, but miss the obvious reason. 349 00:32:51.740 --> 00:32:59.740 At the Industrial Revolution the economy was largely free and the masses of men could benefit from the massive gains in productivity that it brought about. 350 00:32:59.740 --> 00:33:09.740 Today nearly every area but the high-tech sector is heavily controlled and regulated and that prevents the gains from spreading much beyond the employees and stockholders of the high-tech industries. 351 00:33:09.740 --> 00:33:16.740 And of course those gains have been looted by the central state as it has expropriated the gains of the private sector in general for decades. 352 00:33:16.740 --> 00:33:22.740 In this case is that every other government intervention has stolen our past, our present, and our future wealth. 353 00:33:22.740 --> 00:33:28.740 It's depleting the reserve fund of private capital built up over so many generations. 354 00:33:28.740 --> 00:33:34.740 This is why there's a moral and a practical urgency to dismantling the apparatus of the Leviathan. 355 00:33:34.740 --> 00:33:38.740 Those who promise to do so and do not must be held accountable. 356 00:33:38.740 --> 00:33:41.740 At the same time, however, there's another seed of evil. 357 00:33:41.740 --> 00:33:45.740 In academia, leftists are still largely in charge. 358 00:33:45.740 --> 00:33:54.740 By using affirmative action laws, departments and all the social sciences and arts have conspired to keep out good teachers on grounds that they are the wrong race and sex. 359 00:33:54.740 --> 00:34:02.740 In practice, white male students are no longer seriously considered for any merit-based scholarships at any college or university in the country. 360 00:34:02.740 --> 00:34:07.740 The economics profession in subtle ways still remains hostile to free enterprise. 361 00:34:07.740 --> 00:34:17.740 But nevertheless the Austrian School is gaining in strength and the Central State faces no greater foe than this band of deeply committed intellectuals who reject the dominant assumptions of our age. 362 00:34:17.740 --> 00:34:27.740 To understand why we must understand the dynamics of power. State power is inherently unstable because the ruled must always outnumber the rulers. 363 00:34:27.740 --> 00:34:36.740 The regime must always concern itself therefore with public opinion and moral legitimacy if it is to get away with the high level of expropriation we experience today. 364 00:34:36.740 --> 00:34:39.740 That is where the intellectuals could play the crucial role. 365 00:34:39.740 --> 00:34:46.740 If we have a priority today, it is to build up an alternative intellectual culture that affirms the principles of liberty. 366 00:34:46.740 --> 00:34:55.740 This and only this can genuinely threaten the ruling regime and provide the basis for a secure liberty for the next generation and the next and the next. 367 00:34:55.740 --> 00:35:02.740 We must promote a view of man that grants him an inherent dignity not to be controlled and manipulated by the state. 368 00:35:02.740 --> 00:35:08.740 We must have a view of economic life that defends the inviolability of private property and free exchange. 369 00:35:08.740 --> 00:35:13.740 We must adopt a view of the government's role in society that rules out empires at home or abroad. 370 00:35:13.740 --> 00:35:20.740 And our attempts at radical form must affirm the morality and the practicality of freedom above all else. 371 00:35:20.740 --> 00:35:24.740 Intellectuals and the social sciences face a choice. 372 00:35:24.740 --> 00:35:30.740 They can spend their lives playing the game, saying the right thing, providing a cover for tyrannical rule. 373 00:35:30.740 --> 00:35:35.740 like the German Historicists before the turn of the century or elite faculties today. 374 00:35:35.740 --> 00:35:43.740 Or they can seek out truth above all else, propagate that truth among students and truly advance knowledge in the classical sense. 375 00:35:43.740 --> 00:35:47.740 What Mises said in his day is true in our own. 376 00:35:47.740 --> 00:35:56.740 If the centralized state tyranny faces no fundamental challenge, we can expect only worsening social, cultural and economic conditions. 377 00:35:56.740 --> 00:36:02.100 Living standards will continue to fall and do so within business cycles of increasing severity. 378 00:36:02.100 --> 00:36:09.940 Crime will rise as the dysgenic effects of the well-served welfare state have terrifying demographic consequences. 379 00:36:09.940 --> 00:36:15.140 Our children and their children and their children will have fewer opportunities for employment and for schooling. 380 00:36:15.140 --> 00:36:17.740 Our communities will become less and less safe. 381 00:36:17.740 --> 00:36:20.440 Property will become ever more insecure. 382 00:36:20.440 --> 00:36:25.840 Our money could someday be made nearly worthless and government brutality will increase. 383 00:36:25.840 --> 00:36:33.740 We must face up to the seriousness of our task, or the hope that was once America will be gone. 384 00:36:33.740 --> 00:36:37.840 Truly what's at stake is the future of our own civilization. 385 00:36:37.840 --> 00:36:42.840 That is why we must not slacken our efforts in either public life or in academic life. 386 00:36:42.840 --> 00:36:45.340 Most universities are like Capitol Hill. 387 00:36:45.340 --> 00:36:52.440 No serious intellectual culture to speak of, but only people on the dole promoting their self-interest. 388 00:36:52.440 --> 00:36:55.440 But through generous people like you, who believe in freedom, 389 00:36:55.440 --> 00:36:59.440 we at the Mises Institute have been able to take large steps towards creating 390 00:36:59.440 --> 00:37:04.440 that alternative culture of ideas that upholds the traditional standards of scholarship and truth 391 00:37:04.440 --> 00:37:08.440 and holds out freedom as the only way out of our nation's dilemma. 392 00:37:08.440 --> 00:37:15.440 As a result, our nation's campuses are beginning to experience a wave of rebellion against the corruption of the top. 393 00:37:15.440 --> 00:37:20.440 This rebellion doesn't take the stupid and destructive form that it did in the 1960s. 394 00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:24.440 Because these new rebels are true intellectual dissidents. 395 00:37:24.440 --> 00:37:30.440 These student rebels are reading forbidden works like Mises' Socialism and Rothbard's Power and Market, 396 00:37:30.440 --> 00:37:33.440 receiving our periodicals, attending our conferences, 397 00:37:33.440 --> 00:37:38.440 following Mises Institute activities on our homepage on the World Wide Web. 398 00:37:38.440 --> 00:37:42.440 We have a well-rounded strategy designed to meet our shared goals. 399 00:37:42.440 --> 00:37:46.440 The Review of Austrian Economics is our forum for the deep research that's necessary in economics, 400 00:37:46.440 --> 00:37:49.440 and it's in libraries all over the world. 401 00:37:49.440 --> 00:37:55.440 Students have complained that it's hard to get the recent issue in college libraries because somebody's always pulled it down to read it. 402 00:37:55.440 --> 00:38:01.440 Our quarterly Austrian Economics newsletter publishes speeches and interviews with important economists in the Austrian tradition. 403 00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:09.440 The Mises Review tackles new literature from an Austrian perspective so that at last we get a break from reading the left on the left. 404 00:38:09.440 --> 00:38:16.440 And the free market translates much of this into insights about the contemporary political and economic scene. 405 00:38:16.440 --> 00:38:23.440 These publication programs are backed up by a larger publishing program that emphasizes quality above all else. 406 00:38:23.440 --> 00:38:30.440 In the last year, we've published Murray and Rothbard's The Case Against the Fed and his Making Economic Sense, two classics, of clear thinking. 407 00:38:30.440 --> 00:38:34.440 Rothbard's history of economic thought has already become required reading in the field. 408 00:38:34.440 --> 00:38:41.440 We continue to reprint Man Economy and State, next to Human Action remains the top-selling economic treatise. 409 00:38:41.440 --> 00:38:47.280 Treatise. We hold conferences on everything from central banking to war, from welfare 410 00:38:47.280 --> 00:38:51.880 to secessionism. These and our other teaching programs replicate our publishing structure 411 00:38:51.880 --> 00:38:57.600 of production on a different level. Our fellowship program seeks out the best graduate students, 412 00:38:57.600 --> 00:39:01.680 tutors them and guides them through their entire graduate education. Our workshops and 413 00:39:01.680 --> 00:39:06.340 colloquia at Auburn University attract some of the best scholars working today. Our annual 414 00:39:06.340 --> 00:39:10.860 summer school, the Mises University, brings the best students from all over America to 415 00:39:10.860 --> 00:39:40.860 10 years of the Mises University has paid off. Thousands of economics teachers assigned these great thinkers in their classroom. Every important young Austrian working today has attended the program. Students often tell us that the Mises University and our other teaching programs provide the education, the real education, that they hoped that they would get at their college or university, but instead have been denied. And it's not just the students that lack good tutoring and mentoring. 416 00:39:40.860 --> 00:39:44.860 We also find that good scholars lack for colleagues they can trust. 417 00:39:44.860 --> 00:39:50.860 That's why we just held the first Austrian Scholars Conference, an international and interdisciplinary professional meeting. 418 00:39:50.860 --> 00:39:58.860 Many of the people who came, and they came from all over the world, all came at their own expense and called it the highlight of their professional career. 419 00:39:58.860 --> 00:40:06.860 Freshman congressmen have told us that our editorials and our publications give them hope and shore up their courage to confront statism head on. 420 00:40:06.860 --> 00:40:12.860 Activists of the grassroots say we provide them guidance through clarity of thought and tough-minded intellectual leadership. 421 00:40:13.860 --> 00:40:19.860 We work hard because, like you, we believe in the ideas of liberty and because it brings us joy to do the right thing. 422 00:40:20.860 --> 00:40:28.860 We exist to enter the public argument where the principles stand for free markets, sound money, and very limited government, emphasis on the very. 423 00:40:29.860 --> 00:40:35.860 In doing so we uphold the highest standards of scholarship as we seek to move beyond the century of statism into a millennium of liberty. 424 00:40:36.860 --> 00:40:43.860 If we follow through in this vision, we can expect the revival of the philosophy of liberty to continue and to grow. 425 00:40:43.860 --> 00:40:47.860 When our arguments overwhelm our opponents as they have begun to do, 426 00:40:47.860 --> 00:40:53.860 and the lies that undergird our present tyranny are exposed, we can be saved from the apocalypse. 427 00:40:53.860 --> 00:40:59.860 Then and only then, with your help, will we be able to lead an authentic revolution for liberty, 428 00:40:59.860 --> 00:41:03.860 or more precisely, to bring about an authentic counterrevolution 429 00:41:03.860 --> 00:41:12.860 against those who have stolen what is rightfully ours and witness in our time a new flowering of human freedom and a return to justice and prosperity. 430 00:41:12.860 --> 00:41:18.860 Then and only then will we be able to say that the era of big government is over.