“An argument intended to manipulate can stand on emotion. But an argument intended to persuade must stand on fact and reason.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“The wars on poverty, drugs, and terror are unwinnable, and so they will be perpetual.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself.What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it's your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who's not full of hate, who's able to smile and be carefree. So that's who I have to be.”
“What if it's as simple as one moment? One tiny thing, like that kiss on the rocks? What if I'd kissed him a little longer? Would he be alive right now? Or what if I'd stayed with him Friday night, what if I'd been with him… wherever he was?”
Source: One Moment
“Americans lose more of their property to civil asset forfeiture than they do to criminals.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“Just a one percentage point increase in interest rates would cost the federal government more in a year than the annual cost of waging two wars.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“Imagine you make $60,000 a year but owe $400,000 on your credit card and have promised to put eleven people through college: that is what the federal government's finances are like.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“Debt is an especially insidious form of coercion - one imposed on citizens who haven't even been born.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“Minimum wage proponents argue that the minimum wage prevents businesses from paying workers almost nothing. If that were true, then almost all jobs would pay exactly the minimum wage because there is no law requiring employers to pay more. Yet 99 percent of US jobs pay more than the minimum wage.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics
“President Lyndon Johnson declared “all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States” in his 1964 State of the Union address. Since then, the United States has spent $22 trillion on the war on poverty. This does not include Social Security and Medicare spending. The curious thing about all of this, though, is that the poverty rate in the United States was already declining prior to the declaration of this particular war. The US poverty rate fell steadily from 22.4 percent in 1959, to 19.5 percent in 1963. By the end of 1964, it was 19 percent. The poverty rate then declined steadily from 1965 until 1973, when it bottomed out at 11.1 percent. Since then, the poverty rate has averaged 13 percent, moving between 11.1 percent and 15.2 percent ever since. What we have been waging war on since about 1973 is unclear. If it is poverty, we will have to admit that we are not winning, as the poverty rate has remained largely unchanged for about 45 years.”
Source: Cooperation and Coercion: How Busybodies Became Busybullies and What that Means for Economics and Politics