The "Economic Recovery" Continues: Businesses Are Being Destroyed Faster Than They Are Being Created

by Michael Snyder

What would you say about an economy where businesses are shutting down faster than they are opening?? Well, a shocking new study released by the Brookings Institution indicates that this is exactly what is happening in the United States.? We are absolutely killing small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit in this country, and as you will see below, the number of self-employed Americans has been on a downward trend for a decade even though our population has been steadily growing.? Traditionally, small businesses have been the primary engine of job growth in this nation, so the fact that study after study has found that small business creation is being crippled in the United States is a really bad sign for our economic future.

Personally, I write about our long-term economic decline nearly every day, but even I had no idea that businesses were being destroyed faster than they were being created.? According to the Brookings Institution, this first started happening?in 2009...

The American economy is less entrepreneurial now than at any point in the last three decades. That's the conclusion of a new study out from the Brookings Institution, which looks at the rates of new business creation and destruction since 1978.

Not only that, but during the most recent three years of the study -- 2009, 2010 and 2011 -- businesses were collapsing faster than they were being formed, a first.

And this mirrors an earlier study conducted by economist Tim Kane.? According to his analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data, the following is how the decline in the number of new business jobs per one thousand Americans breaks down by presidential administration...

Bush Sr.: 11.3

Clinton: 11.2

Bush Jr.: 10.8

Obama: 7.8

As you can see, this is a problem that has been building for decades and that has accelerated under the Obama administration.

We are strangling small business creation to death, and as a result the number of Americans that are self-employed just keeps going down.? Just check out this chart...

And keep in mind that throughout this entire time the U.S. population has been growing.? So the numbers in the chart above should be going up steadily as the population grows.? But instead they have just kept going down.

Meanwhile, the "economic recovery" is continuing in the corporate world as well.

On Tuesday, we learned that Office Depot is going to be closing 400 stores.

Why would that happen if the economy was actually getting better?

When this was announced, shares of Office Depot rose about 20 percent.

I can never understand why that happens.? You would think that when a business makes an announcement that essentially says "our business is failing" that it would cause people to dump the stock.

In any event, this comes on the heels of an announcement by Staples back in March that it was going to shut down 225 stores in the United States and Canada.

So where will we buy our pens and paper from now on?

If the economy really was "recovering", you would think that demand for office supplies would actually be on the rise.

But the only places where the economy is "recovering" is in places such as Washington D.C., New York City and San Francisco.

Those at the top of the pyramid are doing well, but almost everyone else in the country is really suffering right now.

When you kill off small businesses and the entrepreneurial spirit, it tends to increasingly funnel money to the very top of the food chain.? And this is precisely what is happening in America at this point.? In a recent article, Charles Hugh Smith?included a chart that shows how average household net worth in the U.S. breaks down by quartile...

Bottom 25%: $4,600

From 25% to 50%: $21,700

From 50% to 75%: $78,900

From 75% to 90%: $242,800

Top 10%: $1,606,600

As you can see, the bottom 50 percent are really not that much above zero at all.? In the old days, it seemed like almost everyone was "middle class" in America, but now that is rapidly changing.

We can see this increasing divide in the real estate market as well.? According to?Bloomberg, sales of million dollar homes are booming, but sales of homes at the low end are plunging...

"Million-dollar homes in the U.S. are selling at double their historical average while middle-class property demand stumbles, showing that the housing recovery is mirroring America's wealth divide.

Purchases costing $1 million or more rose 7.8 percent in March from a year earlier, according to data released last week by the National Association of Realtors. Transactions for $250,000 or less, which represent almost two-thirds of the market, plunged 12 percent in the period"

So this explains why it is almost impossible to find an affordable home in San Francisco, but the overall homeownership rate in the United States has dropped to the lowest level in 19 years.

But even in our wealthy enclaves there are signs of deep economic trouble.? For example,?in New York City the number of homeless children has soared to a new all-time high...

They're just like other kids except they have a secret. They are homeless.? Children are living hidden lives in plain sight. They are part a growing number of low income families who find themselves with no way out but they are working hard to find a solution.

It's a big issue. And it's growing. More than 23,000 children sleep in homeless shelters every night, an all-time high, according to the Coalition for the Homeless.

The only "recovery" being experienced in America is the one that is happening on Wall Street, in boardrooms in Silicon Valley and in the halls of power in Washington.

In the rest of the country, retail stores are closing at the fastest pace that we have seen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, 20 percent of all families do not have a single member that is employed and?49 million Americans are dealing with food insecurity.

There is no way that we are ever going to have a broad-based economic recovery in this nation if we continue to destroy small businesses.? They are the lifeblood of any economy and they are the primary engine of job creation.

Sadly, our politicians seem completely clueless about all of this.? So they will continue to do the same things that they have always been doing and then wonder why the economy never seems to turn around.

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Another Obama Inauguration as Amerika's Fascism Continues To Escalate

by Scott Lazarowitz

The Amerikan people have spoken: "We love and adore our Dear Leader. We want more fascism, more government control over our private lives, more theft of the workers and producers, more spying, more war, more drones, less freedom, more destruction and more death." I wonder if Barack Obama invited his half-brother George Obama to the inauguration ? remember George Obama? He?s the president?s half-brother who apparently lives in a shanty in Nairobi, the one President Obama doesn?t seem to have helped out very much. However, George defends Barack?s lack of being his "brother?s keeper," so I guess it doesn?t matter very much. (But it?s just more important that Barack Obama spend $50 million on his inauguration, that?s all.)

As all this is going on, Barack Obama?s comrade, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick says he wants to raise taxes even higher on the workers and producers of the Bay State, on top of their federal taxes that have just gone up (thanks to the selfish degenerates in Washington).

This new tax-theft scheme is intended to fund Patrick?s education and public transportation agendas and expanding of rail service. (Rail service hardly anyone will use, that is.)

In other words, Patrick might as well be saying, "Please let me siphon off more of your hard labor so that I can pay my union buddies in the state-construction racket to thank them for reelecting me and to further my own selfish political ambitions."

Nothing new here. "Good for you," as Elizabeth Warren might say.

Governor Patrick ? a genuine Michael Dukakis on steroids if there ever was one ? is surrounded on Beacon Hill by other self-centered degenerates, as top legislators give their non-productive staff members raises to add to their salaries they don?t deserve, some of which apparently in the 6-figures, and this on top of the state auditor?s staff who had been given a 16% raise. (The state auditor?s office is in charge of getting rid of "waste, fraud, and abuse.")

Gov. Patrick the fascist also just signed the bill to fingerprint "teachers, workers at child care centers, school bus drivers ?" and "everyone seeking to adopt children or become foster parents as well as employees of school departments who may have direct, unmonitored contact with children," with that information placed into a state police database and "forwarded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

Obviously, Patrick is no friend of civil liberties, due process or civil rights. He is a "liberal," after all.

And attempting to fill the shoes of his fellow anti-due process governor from New York, Patrick has filed a bill to further restrict gun ownership in Massachusetts, and to "require the state to send all relevant mental health records to a federal gun license registry," as well as "training teachers to recognize symptoms of mental illness in students."

But how about training students to recognize symptoms of mental illness in teachers? Hmmm? There?s a lot of that going around these days.

Too bad Muffy Healey, Patrick?s 2006 Republican opponent, lost that election.

Like Connecticut, Massachusetts already has the strictest gun control laws in the country. Connecticut?s strict gun laws did nothing to save those 27 victims at Sandy Hook. Neither will Gov. Patrick?s proposals or Obama?s proposals ? they will in fact cost lives, if history is any indication.

There are very few murders per year by use of those "military-style" assault rifles, as compared to pistols, shotguns, knives, hands and feet. But what the fascists want to do is further disarm the population and make people even more defenseless against murderers, wife-beaters, and rapists who use pistols, shotguns, knives, hands and feet.

Previous to Patrick?s newly introduced anti-private gun ownership proposals, the governor of New York had exemplified the purely irrational emotionalism of the gun control crowd, as he screamed and wailed to "end the madness" in his recent State of the State address. His emotionally-charged bill to make people defenseless was rushed through the legislature, just as was George W. Bush?s reactionary Patriot Act in 2001 and Obama?s Affordable Care Act in 2010.

That act of legislation ? now the law in New York ? requires mental health practitioners to report to the government those patients that the doctor thinks may be a danger to others. And Obama?s new proposed Executive Orders includes this: "Clarify that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit doctors asking their patients about guns in their homes."

However, many of today?s physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists and counselors, especially the younger ones, were brought up in the modern, government-controlled schools, which have dumbed down the people and discourage critical thinking skills. The schools now label kids who act normally with an abundance of energy as "hyperactive," or label kids who question their authorities? dictates as "defiant" or suffering from "ADHD."

Or, some of the teachers and parents are afraid to discipline misbehaved kids or to give them a failing grade when they deserve one, in an attempt to avoid "hurting their feelings." So, many of the secondary schools and colleges are accepting or giving passing grades to total incompetents.

Therefore, I am not completely confident in the judgments of our modern and future doctors and mental health practitioners, quite frankly.

And after the school authorities label kids as "defiant," "autistic," or "psychotic," the authorities dish out the psychopharmaceutical drugs, such as Ritalin and SSRI anti-depressants, like candy.

I have heard several of the people being interviewed or speaking on panels regarding the Sandy Hook shootings who have stated that alleged shooter Adam Lanza "should have been medicated," given Lanza?s problems. However, it appears that Lanza may have been on some form of psychopharmaceutical drugs, and for many years, as asserted by the Lanzas? hairdresser and a former babysitter.

As has been the case in many mass shootings now, it?s the opposite of that ? they were medicated, but shouldn?t have been. Alleged Aurora theater shooter James Holmes is now thought to have been on medication, but the documents filed by police, who supposedly had seized pill bottles from Holmes?s home, had been heavily redacted and no specific name of drugs was disclosed.

Many of the school shootings in more recent years were committed by people on anti-depressant or anti-psychotic medication. Some may have been suffering from withdrawal symptoms after stopping their medication.

It is already known that some anti-depressant prescription drugs such as SSRIs and anti-psychotics can cause severely aggressive behavior. But, rather than addressing these prescription drugs, the chicken littles instead want to disarm innocent people and make them even more vulnerable, especially women. And the fascists want to seek out "mentally ill" people and either disarm them as well or perhaps even put them on psychiatric drugs. But who is to decide who is "mentally ill," and is there really "mental illness"?

But given the lack of good judgment of many health practitioners these days, requiring doctors and counselors to report possibly dangerous people to the government could itself be dangerous.

In fact, already in the U.K. the Cameron Regime has been having doctors report on patients who may be "vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism." The U.K. has also engaged in the disarming of the civilian population and thus causing a rise in violent crime there (contrary to the assertions of one CNN nudnik who shall remain nameless here).

Also in the U.K., cameras being placed in private homes, government-sponsored "parenting classes," the government monitoring all emails and website visits in the U.K.?

Yes, I know, that?s England and not America, but government-controlled education has dumbed down a lot of people in a lot of countries.

So why not have doctors reporting on patients, based on the doctors? own subjective biases, lack of critical thinking abilities and their ignorance as well?

As I have noted before, already in the U.S. we have a DHS and FBI wanting people and businesses to report on others as "suspicious" for what are really normal behaviors. But today, thanks to years of government-controlled education, behaviors that are really harmless are now viewed as "suspicious."

According to the FBI and DHS, some of those "suspicious" behaviors include: buying food in bulk amounts, believing in "individual liberty," distrusting "centralized federal authority," and "supporting political movements for autonomy."

For many ignoramuses now, "autonomy" and "independence" = "criminality" and "terrorism."

Being critical of the government is now being seen as "treasonous" or dangerous by some, even though it is our very own incompetent and corrupt government bureaucrats who have been acting criminally and treasonously in many ways, in my view. Just ask Bradley Manning, Brandon Raub, Susan Lindauer and William Binney.

But the psychiatric police state is here, and it won?t involve just mental health professionals but all health care practitioners whose treatment includes their asking patients for very personal information. Because of how our society has declined culturally, intellectually and socially, I am not surprised to have personally already seen doctors of an emotionally and intellectually immature character. Obviously, with Obama?s Soviet medicine, worse is yet to come. There just don?t seem to be very many Dr. Georges around anymore.

If you are not very familiar with your doctors or counselor, it would be wise not to share information with them about your political views, especially "anti-government" views, which many readers here happen to have, or whether or not you own a gun.

You see, thanks to the government-controlled schools and modern Amerikans? lack of critical thinking skills, we have historically-ignorant people who really have no idea what the real purpose of the 2nd Amendment is. A lot of anti-gun rights people (and some pro-gun rights ones as well) actually scoff at the idea that our own government could turn against us.

The cognitive dissonance is amazing! "Liberals" want the civilian population to be disarmed, but they want only government police and government military to be armed, and heavily armed at that! And this despite all the police brutality, the S.W.A.T team raids at the wrong addresses, and criminal behaviors committed by police and prosecutors all over Amerika, as we have seen on a daily basis in the news, on websites such as LRC and on YouTube. Many police are drugging up on steroids, and the military doctors are screwing up the soldiers with prescription drugs including those SSRI anti-depressants and stimulants.

As I have noted here, and in my articles about America?s descent and the coming civil unrest, yes, there have been moments in history in which the U.S. government has turned the guns against the people. And you think that all the atrocities committed by our military, the murdering of innocent civilians overseas, can?t happen here on the Rulers? command? All you have to do is see one article after another on our police state in Amerika, and see exactly what the people in charge are doing to our society.

So Obama is being inaugurated into a second term, and one can reasonably expect it to not be as wonderful as his first term was.
_
Scott Lazarowitz [send him mail] is a writer and cartoonist, visit his blog.

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The Noose Continues to Tighten But No Government Lasts Forever

By Carl Watner

Voluntaryists have a unique outlook on government. They view the State as an invasive institution. It imposes a coercive monopoly over defense services and collects its revenues via compulsory taxation. Theodore Lowi, a professor of political science at Cornell University in the early 1980s, authored a book, INCOMPLETE CONQUEST (1981), in which he observed:

Every action and every agency of contemporary government must contribute to the fulfillment of its fundamental purpose, which is to maintain conquest. Conquest manifests itself in various forms of control, but in all those forms it is the common factor tying together in one system the behavior of courts and cops, sanitation workers and senators, bureaucrats and technocrats, generals and attorney generals, pressure groups and presidents. [p. 13]

Two of the most basic "forms of control" exercised by any government are that of demanding enrollment in its armed forces, and in collecting taxes based on one's income and/or accumulated wealth. Perhaps conscription is the State's most direct control over your life, but its ability to tax ultimately destroys the principle of private ownership. Everything you think you "own" is really held subject to its pleasure. It is as though you are a slave and your master allows you to retain certain perks.

In my article, "The Chickens Come Home to Roost - The Master Plan for 'Tightening the Noose'" (Issue 48, February 1991), I referred to the late Fred Rowe, who wrote an article for his House of Onyx publication entitled "The IRS Electronic Monster." Rowe set forth his predictions about the future state of economic freedoms in these United States. He described what he called an IRS "master plan" under which the United States government would push toward the creation of a cashless society. Electronic money would take the place of banknotes, and all financial transactions would be recorded via computers, which in turn would be connected to those of the IRS. The tax bureaucracy would then take this information and render every citizen and resident of the United States a tax return. Withholding on all income from your labor, and on all major financial transactions, such as the sale of real estate and investments, would enable the government to collect taxes on a mostly "pay-as-you-go" basis. Such computer transparency would also make it very difficult for tax resisters to escape the government's clutching hand.

Whether or not such a conspiratorial master plan was ever hatched by government bureaucrats, the unceasing efforts of government to take control of its citizens' property have continued unabated. Some of the steps in this never-ending battle for conquest and control have been:

...requirements that most people born in the United States have government-issued birth certificates;
...passage of the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution authorizing Congress to tax income;
...requirements that a government social security number be used in conjunction with all large financial transactions and in filing tax returns;
...reporting all domestic cash transactions of $ 3,000 or more to the U.S. Treasury
...attempting to require that payments to individuals of $ 600 or more be reported via 1099 Forms to the Internal Revenue Service;
...requirements to report to the U.S. Treasury and/or U.S. Customs movements of more than $ 10,000 cash and certain other negotiable instruments to and from the U.S.
...requirement that applicants provide a social security number on passport applications, and upon refusal being fined $ 500 by the Internal Revenue Service;
...requirements to report the existence of foreign-held bank accounts and foreign-held assets;
...requirement that anyone renouncing their U.S. citizenship for reasons of avoiding U.S. taxes be liable for U.S. taxes for the 10 years following their renunciation;
...requirement that all employers within the United States verify the eligibility of prospective hires, who, of course, must have a government social security number; [see "Countdown to Extinction," THE VOLUNTARYIST No. 68, June 1994, page 3 for further information]

Now the government is working out some new regulations that affect both our property and our bodies. The Obama care health care legislation mandates that most people in the United States purchase health insurance or pay a penalty. Its constitutionality has been argued before the Supreme Court. Increasingly, doctors are no longer able to abide by the Hippocratic Oath because third-party payers (mostly the government through Medicare and Medicaid, but also insurance companies) make health decisions for their patients. It is no longer between the doctor and patient to determine what is the best treatment. The decision is up to the party paying for that treatment. Furthermore, physicians have been ordered "to adopt electronic health records or face economic sanctions from Medicare." The Federal Commission for the Coordination of Comparative Effectiveness Research will determine the "most-cost effective way of allocating a fixed amount of resources among" the U.S. population. [See "Notable & Quotable," THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, March 17-18, 2012, p. A13]

The government is also tightening the regulations surrounding the ownership of foreign bank accounts and the reporting of assets held abroad. For all practical purposes there has never been any financial or banking privacy in the United States. Currently the governments of the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom have joined together in cooperation to intensify their efforts to combat international tax evasion. On March 10, 2010, the United States enacted the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA). This legislation introduced reporting requirements for foreign financial institutions (FFIs). Many banks headquartered abroad are required to identify U.S. account holders, report certain information to the IRS about their accounts, and assess a 30% withholding tax on certain payments of U.S. source income to recalcitrant account holders or non-participating FFIs that are unwilling to provide the necessary information. In short, great pressure is being brought to bear on banks that are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction to subjugate them to IRS regulations. Some foreign banks, particularly those in Switzerland, have decided to terminate their account relationships with U.S. citizens so as to avoid these entanglements with U.S. law.

All this is reminiscent of what Nazi Germany did to its citizens in the years before World War II. Consider these National Socialist laws:

The decisive sign that the Nazis had turned their sights on the assets of Germans abroad was the law against economic sabotage enacted in December 1936. In part this was aimed at enticing Germans to repatriate their foreign nest-eggs: those prepared to admit they had assets abroad could keep a third of them after they handed over the remaining two-thirds to the Reichsbank, ... 'Any German national who knowingly and having as a motive acts against the law in transferring assets abroad or keeps them abroad and thereby damages the German economy is punished with death'."[Nicholas Faith, SAFETY IN NUMBERS: THE MYSTERIOUS WORLD OF SWISS BANKING, New York: The Viking Press, 1982, pp. 83-84]

[P]ursuant to the Decree on the Registration of the Property of the Jews of April 26, 1938, all Jews were required to value all their assets (foreign and domestic) and register them if their value was in excess of RM 5,000. ["Expropriation (Aryanization) of Jewish Property," General, edwardvictor.com Holocaust/expropriation]

As reported in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL on April 6, 2012 [p. A9], "hiding money in [tax] havens isn't as easy as it used to be." The U.S. Congress has "passed laws imposing draconian penalties on people hiding foreign financial assets." How do the following U.S. government regulations compare to those of Nazi Germany?

A person who holds a foreign financial account may have a reporting obligation even though the account produces no taxable income. ... The FBAR (Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts) is not filed with the filer's federal income tax return. [From IRS.gov: Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) page on the internet]

The principal purpose for collecting the information [required by Department of the Treasury Form TD F 90-22.1 - "Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts"] is to assure maintenance of reports where such reports or records have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or regulatory investigations or proceedings. ... Disclosure of this information is mandatory. Civil and criminal penalties, including in certain circumstances a fine of not more than $ 500,000 and imprisonment of not more than five years, are provided for failure to file a report, supply information, and for filing a false or fraudulent report. Disclosure of the Social Security number is mandatory. [From TD F 90-22.1, 2nd paragraph of the "Privacy Act and Paperwork Reduction Act Note."]

The Internal Revenue Service also has other reporting requirements to be found in Part III (Foreign Accounts and Trusts) of Schedule B, Form 1040, as well as on Form 8938, Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets. A Bloomberg.com news report of August 3, 2011 demonstrates that the IRS means business. Robert E. Greely, who "pleaded guilty to filing a false U.S. tax return that concealed more than $ 13 million in two Swiss" bank accounts, "agreed to pay a civil penalty of $ 6.8 million for failing to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Account form." ["Former UBS Client Greely Admits to Hiding More than $ 13 Million From IRS by David Voreacos; citing U.S. v. Greely, 11-cr-374, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco)]

Why exactly are such assets of concern to the federal government, and why is the "failure to report" foreign assets a crime if it is not illegal to own them? The answer is to be found in the invasive nature of government. Governments demand obedience to their rules and regulations, whatever they may be. Governments also have an insatiable appetite for tax revenues. And furthermore, many governments have a record of confiscating the known assets of their citizens. Although the United States government has never required surrender of assets held abroad, it did confiscate all gold coins and gold bullion in 1933, and outlawed the ownership of gold by American citizens regardless of where it was located. But why would a citizen break the laws of the United States? An American might have several reasons. A person might be a conscientious objector against taxation. A citizen might think that foreign assets would be safe from seizure by the American government because they are outside its domestic jurisdiction. The citizen might also think that having assets abroad would provide a nest egg in case of the need to live abroad. Having foreign assets might provide a means to escape from government agents. During the Nazi era, how many German dissidents or German Jews would have been grateful to have had money outside of Germany, and how much easier would it have then been to leave Germany and escape the Gestapo?

There have been numerous books and articles comparing Nazi Germany and the United States of America. Leonard Peikoff''s 1982 book, THE OMINOUS PARALLELS, was subtitled "the end of freedom in America." Naomi Wolf's more recent publication, THE END OF AMERICA (2007) highlighted "the ten key steps that would-be despots take" when they assume control of a country. These include many that have already occurred in the Untied States:

...invoking the threat of internal and/or external dangers;
...establishing secret prisons where torture takes place;
...building paramilitary forces;
...creating a surveillance apparatus aimed at ordinary citizens;
...infiltrating citizen groups and organizations in an effort to disrupt their activities;
...arbitrarily arresting and detaining citizens and aliens;
...targeting key individuals who criticize the government and destroying their reputations;
...censoring and restricting the press;
...disparaging criticism of the government as "espionage" and dissent as "treason;"
...subverting the rule of law by ignoring constitutional provisions and due process.

No one can foretell how far these trends will affect the future, but they seem to reflect Carroll Quigley's 1966 prediction: Man's "freedom and choice will be controlled within very narrow alternatives by the fact that he will be numbered from birth and followed, as a number, through his educational training, his required military or other public service, his tax contributions, his health and medical requirements, and his final retirement and death benefits." [p. 866] That is the tragic part of the prediction in his book's title, TRAGEDY AND HOPE.

The hopeful part is reflected in what we can observe from history. No government lasts forever. The Nazi 1000 Year Reich was gone in less than two decades. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics lasted less than 100 years. In western Europe, after the Roman empire disappeared, Quigley observes that by 900 A.D. there was clearly a period "when there was no empire, no state, and no public authority ... . The state disappeared, yet society continued. ... It was discovered that man can live without a state; ... . It was discovered that economic life, religious life, law, and private property can all exist and function effectively without a state." [p. 83] Every generation faces natural and political challenges. Despite the tightening of the political noose, our own times are not unique. Some problems are more daunting than others, but life goes on. As Robert LeFevre used to say, the free man will find a way to be free.
_
Carl Watner is an American author and historian of libertarian studies. He has written articles for Reason magazine, The Libertarian Forum, and The Journal of Libertarian Studies. Visit his website, Voluntaryist.com.

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