The possibility of a discriminatory capital-gains tax on gold 'profits,' or even of outright confiscation, cannot be wholly dismissed. We must remember that in 1933, when private citizens began to exercise their clear legal right to convert their Federal Reserve notes and gold certificates into gold, President Franklin D. Roosevelt suspended the conversion, ordered the citizens to exchange their gold for paper money, and made it illegal for private citizens to hold or own gold. In other words, the government not only broke its solemn and explicit pledge to convert its notes into gold on demand, but treated the holder (and dupe) who had taken the pledge seriously as the real culprit. And the Supreme Court later upheld the president's act and the new law.
– Henry Hazlitt
HORNBERGER'S BLOG
July 26, 2019 They Are All Socialists Now
Good for Catherine Rampell. The Washington Post columnist has just hit Republicans with a strong dose of reality. She’s done the same for anyone who reads her column in yesterday’s Post....
Learning Liberty and the Power of Principles
by Richard M. Ebeling
In The Constitution of Liberty, free-market economist and social philosopher F.A. Hayek, quotes in a footnote the famous nineteenth-century scientist Louis Pasteur: “In research, ...
Conservative Nationalism Is Not About Liberty
by Richard M. Ebeling
For almost 200 years there have been two political movements in opposition to the liberal political philosophy of individual liberty, free markets, and constitutionally ...
Attorney General Barr: Defender of FBI Snipers
by James Bovard
Donald Trump’s second attorney general, William Barr, was widely praised during his confirmation process earlier this year. Trump hailed Barr as “one ...
Simon Newcomb and the Let-Alone Principle
by Richard M. Ebeling
Wherever we turn, there are some people who are busy telling the rest of us how we should live; with whom we ...