Inflation is not a benign element in the economy's operation. It is, as it has always been, the most dangerous and destructive form of taxation.

Many anti-energy groups display little appreciation of the extent to which modern economies depend pervasively on the use of fossil fuels and petrochemical products.

Any society that entails the strengthening of the state apparatus by giving it unchecked control over the economy, and re-unites the polity and the economy, is an historical regression. In it there is no more future for the public, or for the freedoms it supported, than there was under feudalism.

True counselors of despair are those who hope against hope—and historical experience—that the government can and will act constructively.

Recipients of transfers set a bad example for others, including their children, other relatives, and friends, who see that one can receive goods, services, or money from the government without earning them. The onlookers easily adopt an attitude that they, too, are entitled to such transfers. They have fewer examples of hardworking, self-reliant people in their families or neighborhoods.

Nothing has done more to render modern economic theory a sterile and irrelevant exercise in autoeroticism than its practitioners’ obsession with mathematical, general-equilibrium models.

In the transfer society, the general public is not only poorer but also less contented, less autonomous, more rancorous, and more politicized. Individuals take part less often in voluntary community activities and more often in belligerent political contests. Genuine communities cannot breathe in the poisonous atmosphere of redistributional politics.