Bill Laggner on large financial institutions

Everyone sits at the bailout trough in American finance.

~ Bill Laggner, Bearing Asset Management, September 9, 2009

Samuel Smiles on innovation

He who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

~ Samuel Smiles

Walter Williams on government lies about Medicare costs

At its start, in 1966, Medicare cost $3 billion. The House Ways and Means Committee, along with President Johnson, estimated that Medicare would cost an inflation-adjusted $12 billion by 1990. In 1990, Medicare topped $107 billion. That's nine times Congress' prediction. Today's Medicare tab comes to $420 billion with no signs of leveling off. How much confidence can we have in any cost estimates by the White House or Congress?

~ Walter Williams, "Washington's Lies," Townhall.com, September 2, 2009

Herbert Spencer on paternalism and moral hazard

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.

~ Herbert Spencer, Essays (1891)

Glenn Jacobs on equal pay for equal work

We’ve all heard the phrase “equal pay for equal work.” Many of those who habitually repeat this mantra may not realize that it is simply a variation of the discredited labor theory of value (LTV), which is generally associated with Marxian economics. According to the LTV, the value of a product is related to the labor needed to produce it. The LTV prevailed in classical economics until the Marginal Revolution in the late 1800s. The marginalists proved that value is not the result of a product’s inputs, but the result of the subjective judgment of individuals.

~ Glenn Jacobs, "The Fallacy of Equal Pay for Equal Work," Freedom Daily, September 2, 2009

F.A. Hayek on egalitarianism

A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.

~ F.A. Hayek

Frédéric Bastiat on the legislator

[T]he legislator, according to the ideas of the ancients, bears the same relation to mankind as the potter does to clay. Unfortunately, when this idea prevails, nobody wants to be the clay, and everyone wants to be the potter.

~ Frédéric Bastiat, “Academic Degrees and Socialism,” [1848]