State Representative Joe Salazar recently drew fire for telling the Colorado legislature that college women should arm themselves with rape whistles rather than guns. 

“And you don’t know, if you feel like you’re gonna be raped, or if you feel like someone’s been following you around, or if you feel like you’re in trouble when you may actually not be,” Salazar said, “that you pop out that gun and you pop … pop a round at somebody.” 

Salazar’s comments suggest he thinks college-age women are not competent to use guns safely. But they also suggest he isn’t aware of just how many lives are saved by people with guns and the role guns can play in leveling the playing field between women and their assailants.

I have firsthand experience. 

In 2003, while out riding mountain trails on a dirt bike and an ATV, my husband and I were attacked. The crazed man approached with a large rock. After a physical confrontation with my husband, I drew the 9mm on my belt and fired. Only then did the attacker flee. If my six-foot-three, 220-pound husband couldn’t fend off the man, how effective would a 130-pound woman blowing a rape whistle have been in a similar circumstance? That gun probably saved both of our lives that day.

Unfortunately, my experience isn’t all that unusual. Gun Owners of America cites a 1997 survey conducted by Kleck & Gertz, which showed, “As many as 200,000 women use a gun every year to defend themselves against sexual abuse.” A more recent article, “10 Stories That Prove Guns Save Lives,” provides anecdotal evidence.

Stories like mine aren’t hard to find. 

Mary Chastain, writing for Breitbart, relates the story of a woman in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, who was accosted as she was getting into her car by a man brandishing a knife. Luckily, when the perpetrator shoved her across the seat, she was able to retrieve her handgun from the glove compartment, which scared the assailant away. In this case, just having a gun prevented a physical confrontation. 

In the same piece, Chastain relates the story of a pregnant woman in Roswell, New Mexico, who was doing her laundry with her three-year-old when a man approached her, undressing as he made sexual advances. He shoved her down and struck her before her landlord stopped him with two blasts from a shotgun. After the first blast, the attacker turned on the landlord, forcing him to fire a second time. If it took two shotgun blasts to stop this woman’s attacker, we have to ask again, how much good would a rape whistle have done?

Attorney Gayle Trotter, writing in The Washington Times, reminds us that “an armed woman does not need superior strength or the proximity of a hand-to-hand struggle. She can protect her children, elderly relatives, herself or others who are vulnerable to an assailant.” Such statements reinforce the findings of a 1985 survey of felons carried out by the National Institute of Justice, in which a large percentage of felons claim they avoid choosing victims they know are armed.

As a woman, I resent any implication that I’m too stupid to wield a gun safely because of my gender. Women have struggled for decades against this type of thinking. But apparently we haven’t come far enough. Yes, the right to keep and bear arms is a women’s issue.

I have been a hunter and a gun owner all of my adult life. I know how to handle and operate a firearm. I feel safer in my home knowing I have a gun to protect me and mine. Women in the military fight for our country with automatic weapons and female police officers carry guns in the line of duty to protect citizens every day. 

Police Magazine relates the story of Sgt. Kristin Shiner, an off-duty sheriff’s sergeant in Collier County, Florida, who apprehended a gunman who had shot and killed one man; before he could injure others, she stopped him without firing her weapon because she thought clearly and acted wisely. There are numerous stories like Shiner’s, of women saving themselves and others by arming themselves. 

When Joe Salazar made his initial comments, he was responding to the story of a coed who was raped while her gun had been locked in her car (that is, she had complied with gun restrictions).

One detail, though one we might expect, was that the woman was smaller than her assailant. As a woman, I can relate. That could have been me. 

As an American citizen, I have a right under the Constitution to own a firearm to protect myself. If any whistles need to be blown, it’s on the kind of politicians and bureaucrats that would violate those rights, fundamental to each of us protecting his or her life in a dangerous world.

Polls have shown for years that Americans think the current federal income tax system is “unfair.” And that was before the disgusting IRS targeting of conservatives, libertarians, tea party activists, Christians, and reporters the Obama administration doesn’t like. A large majority of the country favors a “complete overhaul” of the system. Even former IRS Commissioner Shirley Peterson has said, “we should repeal the Internal Revenue Code and start over.”

It’s not as though Americans weren’t given fair warning. Guess who made these remarkably radical statements about the very idea of a federal income tax more than one hundred years ago:

1. “… an abhorrent and calamitous monstrosity. . . . It punishes everyone who rises above the rank of mediocrity. The fewer additional yokes put around the necks of the people, the better.”

2. “… a vicious, inequitable, unpopular, impolitic, and socialistic act. . . . the most unreasoning and un-American movement in the politics of the last quarter-century.”

3.  “… can only be collected by prying into the private affairs of the people by arbitrary methods hateful to the citizens of the republic.”

Those were the words of the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune respectively, commenting in 1894 on the first income tax to be passed by Congress.

This vitriol was aimed at a proposal to levy a mere 2 percent tax on income in excess of $4,000—which would be at least $70,000 in today’s dollars. Because of that large $4,000 exemption, 98 percent of Americans were completely exempt from income taxation. One year later the Supreme Court ruled this tax to be unconstitutional, and so ended America’s first peacetime experiment with an income tax. It would take a constitutional amendment—the 16th, passed in 1913—to give Congress the legal power to shackle us with another one.

In 1909, when the 16th Amendment was being debated, the New York Times criticized it, saying, “When men get in the habit of helping themselves to the property of others, they cannot be easily cured of it.” History has proven that prediction to be correct, though I doubt that it bothers the New York Times as much today as it did in 1909.

After the 16th Amendment was ratified, an income tax was imposed, starting in 1913 with rates ranging from 1 percent to 7 percent, and the top rate applying only to incomes in excess of $500,000. By 1916 that top rate had risen to 15 percent, on income in excess of $2,000,000. Before Woodrow Wilson left office in 1921, the top rate was in excess of 70 percent. It exceeded 90 percent at its peak in the early 1950s. Though the top rate now is about half as high (but creeping back up), tax rates themselves are a sideshow compared to the intrusive tyranny the IRS has become. It is the proctologist you never, ever want to see.

The first 1040 form—instructions and all—took up only four pages. Today, there are thousands of pages of incomprehensible tax forms and instructions. American workers and businesses are forced to spend at least six billion man-hours every year figuring out their taxes. Last week in testimony before Congress about the targeting scandal, IRS Commissioner Steven Miller with a straight face uttered what ought to become both the Understatement of the Century as well as the official epitaph of the IRS when he said the agency “provided horrible customer service.”

America’s experience with the federal income tax confirms the prophetic wisdom of John Marshall almost two centuries ago: “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.”

The federal income tax system is burdensome and stupid. It’s a diabolical tool against the people’s liberty. Let’s finally muster the courage to get rid of it-—and the entire IRS “workforce” of 95,000 lackeys too shameless and unmindful to protect our liberty.

Market signals about the relative value of available materials are paramount for widely dispersed people to make rational decisions. Such was the solution to the “knowledge problem” elaborated by F. A. Hayek. A topical example of Hayek’s theory in practice is the decade-long adjustment in the prices of oil and products refined from petroleum. Oil is generally considered to be a fungible global commodity, and one frequently hears reference to global oil prices as reflecting global supply and demand. But a combination of factors over the past decade has substantively reduced the fungibility of this once-standard product. 

Increasingly, oil is a design-specific product and the price you pay at the pump for a gallon of fuel more often reflects local design characteristics than the underlying price of a global commodity. These local design characteristics are exacerbated by regulations that disrupt the market’s price-discovery process. 

As recently as December 2001, oil was still trading at the 20-year average of $20 per barrel, even despite the September 11 attacks and the ongoing recession. Over the next seven years, a series of disruptions drove the price up. It became more expensive to do business with the countries that held most of the world’s proven reserves, which two oil-intensive wars did nothing to help. Moreover, oil politics in Venezuela and surging demand from China and other developing nations helped push prices to record highs—over $130 per barrel—by 2008.

By the time the economic crash brought prices back down to $39 per barrel, major oil companies had already invested billions in research and development projects to bring new supplies online. These spanned unconventional tar sands, tight shale oil, unconventional natural gas, and even biofuels. As recovery slowly crept along in the United States, oil prices peaked again at $110 in April 2011. Since then prices have stabilized between $90 and $100 per barrel. At that level for light, sweet Texas Tea, it is profitable to fill the marginal barrel with a combination of cheaper and vastly available shale oil, tar sands, and Brazilian sugarcane ethanol. 

Regulatory Barriers

But even as global price discovery for oil appears to be reaching equilibrium, in the United States today there is a growing knowledge problem in what actually drives the retail supply of gasoline and diesel. As the global oil slate has gotten heavier, regulatory burdens have only increased already-daunting costs and have kept the American refinery fleet largely inflexible. 

Keep in mind that no two refineries are of identical design, capacity, or location, and no new U.S. refinery has been built since 1976. The result is that some refineries today are limited by the amount of asphalt they can accept in their crude, while others are limited more by the capacity to remove sulfur. Only a handful of refiners have elected for the extensive upgrades and regulatory approvals needed to process large amounts of oil shale or tar sands.

Increasingly stringent specifications simply cannot be met with the available refineries and crude mix, and regulatory bottlenecks keep other sources from picking up the slack. A recent example: Last October, one refinery in Southern California was idle for maintenance when a second refinery had to shut down briefly after a power failure. The second outage was enough to send California prices up $0.53 per gallon above the national average. And since gasoline from outside the state doesn't meet California specifications, gasoline from the remaining California refineries had to be rationed. The United States is thus a patchwork quilt of discrete regulated markets, rather than a single market. This fact, of course, makes fuel prices higher than they would be in a single market.

Then there’s ethanol. Since 2007, legislation has mandated increases in the amount of ethanol blended into gasoline. This year 14 billion gallons of ethanol will displace about 10 percent of a fast-shrinking U.S. gasoline market. 

But the ethanol mandates confound a separate effort at smog prevention. Most major cities across the country are still considered non-attainment areas for ozone, a contributor to urban smog. Quite a bit of urban smog today is from the small amount of gasoline leaking out of your gas tank. Especially in the summer, small amounts of evaporated gasoline from each of millions of cars add up to a lot of fugitive emissions. 

Ethanol makes evaporation even worse. As refiners have been required to blend in more ethanol, they have had to compromise already-constrained operating conditions and crude slate in order to meet EPA specifications. The result is an even lower yield of gasoline from each barrel, and even higher prices for summer-grade gasoline. The EPA evaporation standard also exacerbates wasteful incentives from artificial price barriers: Gasoline sold across state and county lines may not be subject to regulation and may therefore be cheaper, making it worthwhile to drive 20 to 30 miles just to buy gasoline. 

Diesel

A similar set of regulatory constraints is affecting the supply of diesel. In 2007, the EPA lowered the sulfur limit for on-road diesel to 15 parts per million (ppm), and for the first time it applied the previous specification of 500 ppm to off-road diesel, such as railroad and marine fuels. Last year, the 15 ppm ultra-low-sulfur diesel (ULSD) specification was applied to off-road diesel as well. Having to meet new specifications has left refiners with three options: use only the lightest and sweetest crudes, operate existing equipment harder and sacrifice yields, or invest the necessary capital to maintain capacity.

The cumulative effect of all these regulations is to make oil less of an economic "commodity" and more and more a specialty product produced (and priced) based on a combination of source, local production, and refining constraints; regional and state-based environmental regulations; political mandates affecting blending; transportation and pipeline availability; and other factors.

After a decade of price discovery, the growing knowledge base about supplying unconventional fuels has converged on a price point of $90 to $100 per barrel of conventional crude. Eventually there will be a benchmark price for tar sands and shale oil, traded at some discount to West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark grade. But despite financial-market transparency for “standard” petroleum benchmarks, there is a growing disconnect between the price of oil and the price and supply of retail fuels in any specific market.

This month, an organization called Defense Distributed discovered how to “print” a plastic pistol that really shoots. Defense Distributed, which is dedicated to preserving the right to keep and bear arms, used a 3-D printer to read a real pistol’s electronic blueprint and print out a plastic version. On its website, company officials made the blueprint of its pistol, “Liberator,” available for download along with blueprints for various parts of other types of guns. 

On May 8, however, the U.S. Department of State demanded that Defense Distributed cease publishing gun blueprints on the company’s website. The State Department alleged the blueprints, which already have 100,000 downloads, may violate the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which restrict export of weapons information. So far, Defense Distributed has obeyed the State Department’s demand. 

Pandora’s box has already been opened. 

First, Defense Distributed discovered how to make guns available to everyone in the world. Using photocopiers or computers, people have been able to copy books, MP3 files, computer software, and other items without limit. Now, using 3-D printers, people can copy guns without limit. The neologism for such items is “non-scarce goods.” Jeffrey Tucker and Stephan Kinsella define these as “[things] in demand that can be replicated without limit…with no additional copy having displaced the previous copy and with no degradation in the quality of the copied good from the original good…I can have one, you can have one, and we can all have one.” Non-scarce goods are likely to hasten an age of abundance.

Second, Defense Distributed’s printed gun shows that the right to keep and bear arms can overlap with freedom of the press. The Second Amendment protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” which is an individual right. The First Amendment protects “freedom of …the press.” Based on UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh’s landmark research on press freedom, I’ve argued before that “the press” was meant to refer to any communications technology, such as today’s office printers or blogs. 

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the founders did not understand “the press” to be one discrete set of people, like the mainstream media, bloggers, or even pamphleteers. Press freedom belongs to the average Jane as much as to any reporter. As people can use 3-D printers for a variety of purposes, including the printing of signs and the publication and replication of art, the First Amendment surely protects the product of 3-D printers. Thus, the First and Second Amendments protect the printing of guns. 

Printed guns show the folly of such gun-control laws as universal background checks on potential gun buyers, because anyone can now print guns at home. As Defense Distributed notes, any attempts to rid society of guns “will [now] require tyranny.” By invoking ITAR, the State Department is preventing Defense Distributed from publishing gun blueprints. However, as printed gun specs are non-scarce goods that the First and Second Amendments protect, any American could still have, to paraphrase rapper M.I.A., “more guns than the KGB.” 

I’ll start remixing.

There seems to be only one kind of loan that bankers want to make—SBA loans. SBA stands for Small Business Administration, a federal agency that guarantees certain loans made by banks that operate within its guidelines.

Lawmakers portray SBA lending as a boost for small businesses. The program is actually a form of corporate welfare for some of America’s largest banks. While banks reap profits, taxpayers cover the losses.

SBA lending is especially lucrative because, with a government guarantee, there are plenty of buyers for these loans in the secondary market. Borrowers are paying interest rates of 6 percent or more and the government is standing behind the majority of the loan balance. Buyers will pay large premiums for that kind of risk-free yield.

As hard as it has been to pry funds from lenders since the financial crash, the SBA had record years in 2011 and 2012, writing over $30 billion in loans each year. Making a profit and collecting interest and principal are not included in the SBA’s goals. Instead, the agency’s three strategic initiatives for 2012 were as follows:

1. Growing businesses and creating jobs.

2. Building an SBA that meets the needs of today’s and tomorrow’s small businesses.

3. Serving as a voice for small businesses.

The agency’s flagship loan product is the 7(a) program that funds business loans. More than $15 billion in SBA 7(a) loans was disbursed in 2010. The two years following were brisk as well, nearly matching the boom years of ‘04 through ‘07. These loans were used, per SBA guidelines, “to establish a new business or to assist in the operation, acquisition, or expansion of an existing business.” 

Why, in particular, was there a surge in 7(a) loans?  The Congressional Research Service reports,

Congressional interest in the 7(a) program has increased in recent years because of concerns that small businesses might be prevented from accessing sufficient capital to enable them to assist in the economic recovery. Some, including President Obama, argue that the SBA should be provided additional resources to assist small businesses in acquiring capital necessary to start, continue, or expand operations with the expectation that in so doing small businesses will create jobs.

Somehow, people like those cited above have come to believe that small businesses are at a disadvantage in obtaining credit. It’s a “market failure,” if you will. So the Small Business Act of 1953 created the 7(a) loan guarantee wherein 85 percent of a loan’s principal up to $150,000 is guaranteed by the government; the guarantee drops to 75 percent for loans more than $150,000. During 2010 and 2011, the guarantee was bumped to 90 percent.

Reams of paperwork are required of loan applicants, and of course approval can sometimes take months. First the bank does its investigation, and then the SBA does it all over again, unless the banker is an SBA preferred lender—then the agency will guarantee whatever loans the preferred lender makes, providing they followed the guidelines. Despite all of this rigorous underwriting, the SBA program has cost taxpayers $1.3 billion since 2000, according to an investigation by the Dayton Daily News. The paper found that a number of borrowers defaulted on their first payment. “Operators of national franchises like Quiznos and Cold Stone Creamery collectively received millions of dollars in loans through the program despite extensive default histories by the franchises,” write Lynn Hulsey and Ken McCall.

One would think there is always a market for sandwiches and ice cream. It turns out nearly 2,600 loans were taken out to fund Quiznos locations from 1990 to 2012, almost half as many as for Subway sandwich shops. According to Hulsey and McCall, these franchises dominated the list of businesses using government guaranteed financing. The 4.8 percent default rate for Subways is considered high. Quiznos’ rate is 23.4 percent.

“Quiznos also led all franchises with $43.5 million in defaulted loan guarantees that SBA had to pay the lending banks. Cold Stone Creamery was second with $29.6 million, followed by Days Inn with $16.9 million and Ramada Inn with $14.3 million.” Evidently being a part of a household name franchise and benefiting from national advertising does not ensure success. It’s worth wondering just how careful the underwriting was on those loans.

Pat Newcomb, director of the Ohio Small Business Development Center at the Entrepreneur Center in Dayton, Ohio, told the Dayton Daily, “There were an awful lot of people who got small business loans during this period 2004 to 2007 that shouldn’t have gotten them.”

Default rates soared after the 2008 financial crash. Lenders in a free market might pull in their horns in the wake of such bad loan experiences. Lenders handing out 7(a) funds, however, had a banner year in 2012, after their guarantee rates were increased in 2010 and 2011.

SBA lending is based upon politics and quotas, not economics. For instance, Bloomberg Businessweek reports that the national leader in 7(a) loans, Wells Fargo, has set a goal of lending $5 billion to Asian-American business owners by the end of this year. “KeyBank also runs a minority and women's business enterprise program to help boost those outfits.” The SBA’s website has dozens of minority lending, training, and grant programs listed. With Congress and the President behind small business lending and taxpayers footing the bill, government-backed lending has been full speed ahead while credit is tight otherwise. Why should the banks do anything else? 

This all should remind readers of the mortgage business. Through entities like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA, the government now controls more than 90 percent of the home mortgage market.

The small-business Coyote Blog explains,

The SBA has already pretty much killed small business cash flow lending. Basically, if you want a loan secured only by cash flow, the SBA is your only choice. Why would a bank make such a loan privately when they can make it and get an SBA guarantee paid for by the client? As a result, no bank even has a desk for non-SBA lending, and since SBA lending is hard, many don't have an SBA desk any more.

The blogger for Coyote speculates that the SBA has killed innovation in the private lending market and writes, “loans with SBA backing have crowded out everything else out there, such that a small business really can't find a lender who will make small business loans except with SBA backing. Bankers are people too, and they can get lazy. They have come to rely on these government programs.”

Commenters on the blog confirmed the writer’s view:

• “Banks simply don't understand anything other than SBA guidelines.” 
• “The amount of cluelessness seen was pretty breathtaking. Basically, bankers (in general) know just enough about SBA guidelines to be able to semi-randomly throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Actual business knowledge? I couldn't find any.” 
• “I have no doubt the SBA killed off development of new ideas on small business lending.”

The SBA and the banks have PR machines that highlight the successful businesses that started with SBA financing. Like all government programs, there are always a few very visible beneficiaries. What isn’t so apparent is that when loans are made for political considerations as opposed to financial ones, capital is wasted and we are all made poorer.

4 spots–Who Will Build the Roads? And Other Questions About Free Societies 
June 14-17: Prescott, AZ -  Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

5 spots–Going Green: Free Market Environmentalism
June 24-27: Seattle, WA - University of Washington

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June 28-July 1: Seattle, WA - University of Washington

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July 8-11: St. Louis, MO - St. Louis University

To claim a spot in one of these seminars you will need to fill out the Online Application no later than midnight on Monday, May 20^th!

Hurry, these spots will fill up fast!

Regards,

Todd Hollenbeck
College Programs Coordinator
Foundation for Economic Education

We are now in the fifth year of very choppy hiring markets for young workers. The latest unemployment numbers once again leave them out from posted gains. Not even the boom in temporary employment included them. 

The United States has one of the highest rates of unemployment amongst 20-to-26-year-olds in the world. Nearly half of the U.S. army of unemployed is under the age of 34. As for those who are hired, there is a huge gap between wage expectations and paycheck realities, which is exactly what you would expect in post-boom world. A survey by Accenture finds that more than 41 percent of recent U.S. college graduates are disillusioned, underemployed, and not using their college degrees in their work. 

The young generation faces challenges unlike any that most people alive have seen. This situation requires new adaptive strategies. 

What follows, then, is my letter of advice to young workers.

Dear Young Workers:

Even if it weren’t for the economic stagnation, you would already be facing a tough market. That’s because you are showing up at the job marketplace nearly empty-handed. Our society long ago decided it was better for you to sit in desks for 16 years than to gain any real work experience in the marketplace that is likely to hire you later. 

Even if it were legal for you to work when you are capable of doing so—from the age of maybe 12 or 13—the government has imposed these wage-floor laws that price your services out of the market. Then you are told that if you stay in school, you will get a great, high-paying job right out of college. Then it turns out that employers aren't interested in you. You are beginning to sense that employers think you have few marketable skills and have no demonstrated predisposition to produce. 

Here’s the root of the problem: People have been lying to you all your life. 

As a young child you were repeatedly fed slogans about the equality of everyone. The urges to compete and win were suppressed in your childhood games, while sharing and caring for others were exalted above all other values. 

Then at some point—somewhere between the ages of 7 and 10—something changed. All that caring/sharing stuff ended and a world of dog-eat-dog began. You were expected to get perfect grades, to excel at math and science, to be perfectly obedient, to stay in school for as long as possible. You were told that if you did that, everything would work out for you. 

It does work out for some. But only a small minority of people are disposed to both compliance and rote learning. And even for those people, not everyone gets what they’ve been promised. As for the rest, there is no plan in place. Those who fall through the cracks are expected to make it on their own somehow.

How do you make it? It all comes down to remunerative work. And there’s the barrier you face right now. You have the desire and you are looking for some institution that values what you have to contribute. But you can’t find the match. 

Consider: Why does any business hire an employee? It happens based on the belief that the business will make more money with the employee than without it. The business pays you, you do work, and, as a result, there are greater returns coming in than there would otherwise be. 

But think through what this means. It means you have to add more value than you take out. For every dollar you earn, you have to make it possible for the business to earn a dollar plus something extra. This task is not easy. Businesses have costs to cover in addition to your salary. For example, government mandates that businesses be insured. You have to be trained. There could be healthcare costs, too. There are uncertainties to deal with. All of these add to the burden that you place on the business, which add to the costs of hiring you. 

What this means is you have to be more valuable than you think. Why are minimum wage jobs so hard? Because it’s difficult for an inexperienced worker to be worth paying that much. The employer has to extract as much value as possible from the relationship with you just to make that relationship happen at all. That can’t happen right away because odds are you are losing the company money in the first months of employment simply because you are untrained. You end up scrambling like crazy just to earn your keep.

If you already understand this rule—that you must add more value than you take out—you now know more than vast numbers of young workers. And this gives you an advantage. While everyone else is grumbling about the workload and low pay, you can know why you are having to hustle so much and be happier for it. You are producing more for the company than you take out. Doing that consistently is the way to get ahead. In fact, it’s the key to life. 

But in order to get ahead, you have to be a player in the first place. It does little good to sit around and wait for the right job at the right pay. Forget all your expectations. If something, anything, comes along, you should jump on it immediately. No job is too menial, despite what you have been told. The goal is just to get in the game. Yes, you have much higher salary expectations and those might be met someday. But not yet. 

The first step is to get into the game at some wage, just something, somewhere. The fear that such work, whatever it is, is somehow beneath you is a serious source of personal undoing. Those who are willing to perform the most “menial” of jobs are the people who can make a good life for themselves. Just because you perceive the job as “menial” does not mean it is not valuable to others and especially, ultimately, to you.

You learn from every job you have. You learn how to interact with others, how a business runs, how people think, how bosses think, and how those who succeed get ahead versus those who fail. Working is a time for learning, as much as or more than school. 

People’s number one fear is that their job will somehow define their lives. Hence, they conclude that a job stocking shelves at Wal-Mart will redefine or dumb down who they are. This notion is absolutely untrue. That job is a brick in your foundation. 

In order to get any job, you have to do more than drop off a resume or file one online. You have to emerge from the pack. That means that you have to sell yourself like a commodity. You have to market yourself (and marketing is the least-appreciated and yet most-crucial feature of all commercial acts). That is not degrading; it is an opportunity. Find out everything you can about the company and its products. After you apply, you need to go back and back, meet the managers, meet the owners, all with the goal of showing them how much value you will add to their enterprise. 

In this new job, success is not hard, but it requires discipline. Just follow a few simple rules. Never be late. Do first whatever your immediate supervisor tells you to do. Do it much more quickly and thoroughly than he or she expects. When that is done, do some unexpected things that add value to the environment. Never complain. Never gossip. Never partake in office politics. Be a model employee. That’s the path toward thriving.

It’s not just about adding value to the company. It’s about adding value to yourself. The digital age has given us all amazing tools for accumulating personal capital. Get a LinkedIn account and attach your job to your personal identity. Start putting together that essential network. This network is something that will grow throughout your life, starting now and lasting until the end. It could be the most valuable commodity you have outside your own character and skills. Take possession of your work experience and make it your own. 

While doing all this excellent work, you need to be thinking about two possible paths forward, each of them equally viable: advance within this one firm or move to another firm. You should go with whichever is to your best advantage. Never stop looking for your next job. This is true now and always throughout your life. 

A huge mistake people make is to embed themselves emotionally in one institution. The law encourages this attitude by tying all sorts of advantages to the status-quo job you currently hold. You get health benefits, time off, scheduled raises, and it is always easier to stick with what you know. To do so is a mistake. Progress comes through disruption, and sometimes you have to disrupt yourself to make that progress happen. 

To be willing to forgo the security of one job for the uncertainty of another gives you an edge. Average people around you will sacrifice every principle and every truth for the sake of security. People, with very few exceptions, fear the uncertainty of an unknown future more than the seeming security of a known status quo. They will give up every right and every bit of their souls for the promise of security (whether it be through a paycheck or an armed police officer), even to the point of personal misery or obeying a wicked despot (whether it be a boss or a dictator). You can break free of this tendency, but it takes courage, risk taking, and a conscious act of defying convention.

You should always think of yourself as a productive unit that is always on the job market. You can go from institution to institution, always upgrading your skills and hence your wages. Never be afraid to try something new or to plunge into a new work environment. 

Clever finance management here is crucial. Never live at the level that matches your income. Your standard of living, instead, should match your next-best employment opportunity, the one you have foregone or the one you might take next. If you stick with this practice—and it requires discipline—you will be free to choose where you work and to take greater risks. You will also develop a cushion should something go wrong. 

At the same time, there could be advantages to sticking around one place, even as everyone else around you is moving from here to there. Even if that happens, you should still think of yourself as being on the market. You are governing yourself. Don’t let yourself be beholden to anyone, but understand also that no one owes you a living. That’s the only way to make clear judgments about your career path. 

At every job, you are going to learn so much about human ethics, psychology, emotions, and behavior. Most of what you will learn will be enlightening and encouraging. Some of it, however, is not pretty and might come as a shock. 

First, you will discover that people in general are extremely reluctant to admit error. People will defend an opinion or an action until the end, even if every bit of logic and evidence runs contrary. Sincere apologies and genuine admissions of error and wrongdoing are the rarest things in this world. There is no point at all in demanding apologies or in becoming resentful when they fail to appear. Just move on. Neither should you expect to always be rewarded for being right. On the contrary, people will often resent you and try to take you down. 

How do you deal with this problem? Don’t get frustrated. Don’t seek justice. Accept the reality for what it is. If a job isn’t working out, move on. If you get fired, don’t seek vengeance. Anger and resentment accomplish absolutely nothing. Keep your eye on the goal of personal and professional advancement, and think of anything that interrupts your path as a diversion and a distraction. 

Second, we all want to believe that doing a great job and becoming excellent at something will lead to personal reward. This is not always or even often true. Excellence makes you a target of envy from those around you who have failed by comparison. Excellence can often harm your prospects for success. Meritocracy exists, and even prevails, but it is realized through your own initiative, and it is never just granted freely by some individual or institution. All personal and social progress comes about because you alone push through the attempts of everyone around you to stop it.

Third, people tend to possess a status-quo bias and prefer to follow orders and instructions; most people cannot imagine how the world around them might be different through initiative and change. If you can train yourself to imagine a world that doesn’t yet exist—to exercise the use of imagination and creativity in a commercial framework—you can become the most valuable person around. You might be among those who can be real entrepreneur/capitalists. You might even change the world. 

As you develop and use these talents, and as they become ever more valuable to those around you, remember that you are not infallible. The commercial marketplace punishes pride and arrogance and it rewards humility and the teachable spirit. Be happy for your successes, but never stop learning. There is always more to know because the world is ever changing, and none of us can know all things. The key to thriving in this life is to be prepared to not only change with it but to get in front of the change and drive it. 

From where you are now, unemployed with few seeming prospects, your future might look hopeless. This perception is not true. There are barriers, to be sure, but they are there to be overcome by you and you alone. The world does not work like you were told it works when you were a kid. Deal with it and start engaging the reality around you right now just as it is, using intelligence, cunning, and charm. You are the decision-maker, and whether you succeed or fail ultimately depends on the decisions you make.

In many ways, you are a victim of a system that has conspired against you. But you get nowhere by acting like a victim. You don’t need to be a victim. You have free will and the capacity for self-governance; indeed you possess the human right to choose. Today is the day to start exercising it.

Lecture One: What is Entrepreneurship?, with Professor Edward Stringham

Lecture Two: The Role of Entrepreneurial Profit, with Professor Frederic Sautet

Lecture Three: Entrepreneurship and Market Ethics, with Professor Frederic Sautet

Lecture Four: Entrepreneurship and Public Regulations

By virtue of its role as host to bumbling legislators and attendant federal apparatchiks, Washington, D.C., enjoys a justifiable and continuous thunderstorm of public disdain. As a city itself, between red tape and the inexplicable career of Marion Barry, the Imperial Swamp catches a fair amount of scorn. So far as education goes, however, it is the vanguard of the charter school movement, for which it deserves a standing ovation. Washington’s success with the autonomy and competition of publicly funded microdistricts serves as a working model for education reform throughout the United States.

Reform was and is desperately needed. 

You might already have developed a sneaking suspicion that somehow you are living in a country filled with morons. Sadly, this is an empirically verifiable fact: An ominous poll conducted and verified by Guys in Labcoats underscored the surprising idiocy of our citizenry.

One out of five people thinks the sun revolves around the Earth. (Which is horrifying, of course, because it means four out of five Americans are doomed to Hell for blasphemy.) Sixty-seven percent of Americans know that Superman hails from the planet Krypton, yet only 37 percent know that Mercury is the closest planet to our sun. Three-quarters of Americans can name all three Stooges (Larry, Curly, and Ginsburg), while less than half know all three branches of government (executive, judicial, and judicial activist).

We might ask ourselves: Where along the line do people lose even the most elementary knowledge of basic geography and history, forever embarrassing us when we vacation in Europe? Surely schooling has some effect?

In this regard, Washington deserves due credit for strategically implementing genuine solutions to its hitherto boggy school performance, instead of mindlessly flinging money at it. 

In 1995 Congress authorized Washington to establish an independent system of charter schools, which sprouted up the following year. Each charter school is a publicly funded autonomous unit, allowing for competition among schools and local control within them to spur innovation.

Contrary to common belief, charter schools are generally given less funding than their public school counterparts. District children in either system attend school for free, but charter schools are allotted smaller block grants than their behemoth neighbors. They make up the difference through private donations, or by better allocating resources. Their ability to do so is astounding. From 1999 to 2005, charter schools completed renovations at half the cost of other D.C. public schools. In terms of output, poor children attending charter schools significantly outpace their peers in traditional schools.

Competition and autonomy have led to excellent teachers and higher aptitude-test scores. Free of micromanagement, bureaucracy, and politicking, charter schools have extended their hours and days, and they quickly respond to their students’ individual needs. Rocketship Prep Schools, granted a charter last year, employs the use of “computers” and “the Internet” to reduce overhead. This novel concept of fully integrating technology into the classroom affords teachers more time to spend on individual tutoring.

The main argument against charter schools is that they might outcompete sluggish public schools, prompting the district to funnel more students and fund their direction (away from public school budgets). It’s an interesting argument, because its central idea—that parents will want their children to attend superior schools—more or less acknowledges that charter schools are indeed superior. For some reason many people see this as a problem.

It’s unlikely that charter schools will permanently displace public schools. Charter schools require parents active enough to at least apply for admission on their children’s behalf, and not all parents will do so. Granted, that’s more depressing than reassuring, but it’s worth remembering that “bad parents” are not something school districts can fix, even if the NRA succeeds in arming all teachers. Charter schools at least provide more cost effective and innovative environments for children to learn in.

Overall, concerns about charter schools are muted by the applause of happy parents and locals alike—D.C.’s charter schools are nearly 20 years old, and growing. If they are indeed a conservative Trojan Horse poised to raze public education, charter schools certainly picked an overwhelmingly union-friendly and liberal city to infiltrate. 

Perhaps their success is due less to the machinations of zealous privatizers and is simply owed to performance. Cities and states across America would do well to follow suit and grant charters in their districts. Washington, D.C., has already provided the template, for which it deserves a standing ovation. Perhaps, if charter schools become more widespread, a full 90 percent of America’s youth will graduate knowing Superman’s home planet.

At FEE, we know firsthand what the IRS is capable of. In today’s Wall Street Journal, James Bovard refers to an instance when the IRS targeted FEE and its founder, Leonard Read: "Within a few days of Kennedy's remarks, the IRS launched the Ideological Organizations Audit Project. It targeted right-leaning groups, including the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, the American Enterprise Institute and the Foundation for Economic Education."

David Beito explained the details in this 2011 article. He writes:

In 1950 Leonard E. Read faced one of the most difficult challenges of his life as he prepared to appear before a hostile congressional committee. His friend W. C. Mullendore warned that the committee was out to destroy him: “You should be under no illusion whatever but that the intention is to smear and not look [for] information, enlightenment and the philosophy of freedom. You are going against a bunch of cutthroats who have very vicious motives.”

And as Beito goes on to explain, most historians are happy to mention McCarthy and let instances like these pass into obscurity.

If our fellow citizens decide when all is said and done that the problem in Washington is that the wrong people are in key positions, that simply replacing them will fix things, then we might as well stop the inquiries now. We will have failed to learn the larger lessons. Big government is bad government and it cannot be otherwise.

When concentrating power and scooping up other people's money are the objectives, abuse of power and waste of money are inherent and inevitable. The statist, end-justifies-the-means mentality is a green light for anything but character. When you elect or appoint people who have created nothing, managed nothing, and want to redistribute everything, you get rampant incompetence and never-ending threats to liberty. And if you think what you’ve heard so far about the IRS is ugly, just wait until thousands upon thousands of new IRS agents get their mitts on your health-care records as part of their mandate to enforce Obamacare.

Frédéric Bastiat warned us nearly 200 years ago: "When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."

The only thing about the burgeoning IRS scandal in Washington that should surprise anyone is that it didn’t become known sooner.

Back then we put our pennies on the tracks
and waited for the thunder of the boxcars
to pound the Lincoln from their faces, so flat
the mint of it was worthless, priceless, rare.
Those were days the full sun of Los Angeles
crushed us as we thumbed the polished metal
to search for evidence: a god we trust,
a liberty, a date. It takes a god to kill
a god, to have it drummed beneath the thrust
of this world. But as I looked down the rails,
I saw something of another, its parallels
that narrowed as they rose against the heat,
so close they almost met, as a man might meet
the boy he was, faceless in the distance.

Ludwig von Mises was not the founder of the Austrian school of economic thought, but by outlining the school's methodological approach Mises defined the Austrian school and its unique position in mainline economics. Professor Ivan Pongracic will discuss Ludwig von Mises' five main contributions to economics.

Prof. Robert Lawson outlines the important connection between economic freedom and economic growth.

In this webinar, Wayne Leighton and Edward Lopez talk about their book, "Liberty in Books: Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers". They argue that a crisis is neither necessary nor sufficient for meaningful political reform. Ideas have consequences only when the right conditions of time and place present themselves, and only when certain individuals -- we call them political entrepreneurs -- seize the opportunity.

Government-led humanitarian efforts have created more harm than good. Despite spending an enormous amount of resources, these good intentions are not producing their desired results. Do we need more government intervention in economic development? FEE Board of Scholars and George Mason University professor Christopher Coyne introduces his book "Doing Bad by Doing Good" where he discusses how by "doing good", government intervention produces bad results.

The primary cause for the 2008-09 financial crisis, and for our ongoing economic woes, is government policy. Financial services is the most regulated industry in the world. As a result, the industry has performed poorly. Government regulations created incentives for massive misinvestment. When the "bubble" burst, millions of jobs were destroyed and tremendous wealth evaporated.

Mr. Allison claims that the fundamental cause of the financial crisis is not economic but philosophical. The cure is also philosophical. 

Today is the 30th anniversary of Leonard Read's passing.

We have much to be grateful to him for. Read laid the foundations for the modern liberty movement as we know it.

Leonard realized that "the idea of individual liberty cannot be 'sold' as if it were a cake of soap; it has to be explained—and explained in such a manner that the reader or hearer gains an intimate insight into the plain truth of the matter. The idea of 'freedom' is more caught than taught; it's analogous to a benign contagion spreading from person to person, until a few begin to say: 'By George, I think I’ve got it!'" (from Leonard E. Read: A Portrait)

His lecture, "How to Advance Liberty," still serves as a handbook for the work we do:

From I, Pencil to Conscience on the Battlefield to Anything That's Peaceful, Read's message of freedom and peaceful cooperation now reaches more people than ever. 

Thank you, Leonard E. Read, for all you've done. You're still teaching us.

Everyone should be skeptical of legislation with the word “fairness” in its title, especially the people it is allegedly designed to assist.

Senator Warren’s legislation would lower the interest rate on federal student loans (called Stafford loans) to be more in line with the rate banks pay to borrow money from the Federal Reserve. The difference between the rate banks pay (0.75 percent) and average interest rate on Stafford loans (3.4 percent) is substantial, and Warren and other supporters of low student loan rates are acting now before rates double to 6.8 percent in July.

The discrepancy between these two interest rates is noteworthy, and should be of concern to anyone seeking to address government favoritism and cronyism.

But what would lower student loan interest rates actually mean for students?

To answer that, we should consider the words of Frédéric Bastiat, from his essay, “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen.”

In the economic sphere an act, a habit, an institution, a law produces not only one effect, but a series of effects. Of these effects, the first alone is immediate; it appears simultaneously with its cause; it is seen. The other effects emerge only subsequently; they are not seen; we are fortunate if we foresee them.

On the surface, doubling the interest rate on student loans would cause students to incur $12,000 in additional interest payments over the life of a four-year college loan, according to an analysis by the Institute for College Access and Success.

But look a bit deeper and you will see that Senator Warren’s well-meaning legislation will only put more upward pressure on college tuitions, making college more expensive for the next generation of students.

Aside from predictable praise from college students, faculty, staff, construction companies, and consumer advocates, here is what is likely to happen if Senator Warren’s bill becomes law:

• Incoming college students will be able to borrow money at a lower interest rate than today’s students.
• Lower interest rates will lower students’ upfront borrowing costs.
• Lower borrowing costs will increase demand for spots at colleges and universities.
• Increased student demand will cause tuition to increase faster than inflation, as it has for decades.
• Higher tuitions will increase salaries for college faculty and staff and spark new building contracts on-campus.
• Higher tuitions will also cause borrowers to spend beyond the maximum amount of their federal loans (now $20,500 annually).
• Higher-education special interests will lobby for a higher maximum loan amount.
• Increased borrowing will cause student loan interest rates to rise to meet higher demand.
• Student loan debt will increase.
• Higher-education special interests will lobby to lower student loan interest rates.

Rinse and repeat until the federal government can no longer borrow enough money to subsidize the higher-education industry.

As Bastiat wrote, “There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.”

Instead of calling for lower interest rates on student loans, those who see the world through the economic lens should prefer interest rates to increase so that colleges and universities get the message that their services are too expensive and so that tuitions, for once in a long while, decrease.

Deflating the higher-education bubble in this way is the only sustainable way to make college more affordable for all who desire to attend.