Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication Page -- Contents -- Foreword -- Preface -- Part I - Politics and the State -- 1 - It's who you Know -- 2 - What's the Point of Demonstrating? -- 3 - Partisan Politics: A Fool's Game for the Masses -- 4 - Democracy's Most Critical Defect -- 5 - Nothing Outside the State -- 6 - Consent of the Governed? -- 7 - Why this Gigantic "Intelligence" Apparatus? Follow the Money -- 8 - Can the Dead (Capitalism) Be Brought Back to Life? -- 9 - The Welfare State Neutralizes Potential Opponents by Making them Dependent on Government Benefits -- 10 - The Systematic Organization of Hatreds -- 11 - All Men are Brothers, but All too Often they do not Act Accordingly -- 12 - Once More, with Feeling: Our System is not Socialism, but Participatory Fascism -- 13 - Love, Liberty, and the State -- 14 - Legitimacy -- 15 - Political Problems have Only One Real Solution -- 16 - The Power of the State versus the Power of Love -- 17 - State Power and how it Might be Undermined -- 18 - All Government Policies Succeed in the long Run -- 19 - Crisis of Political Authority? I Wish! -- Part II - On doing Analysis in Political Economy -- 20 - Ten Rules for Understanding Economic Development -- 21 - Underappreciated Aspects of the Ratchet Effect -- 22 - Diagnostics and Therapeutics in Political Economy -- 23 - Can the Rampaging Leviathan be Stopped or Slowed? -- 24 - Higgs is Just a Pessimist -- 25 - My Question for the Doomsters: Then What? -- 26 - Defense Spending is Much Greater than you Think -- 27 - Which End, if Any, is Near? -- 28 - Communism's Persistent Pull -- 29 - The Dangers of Samuelson's Economic Method -- 30 - Don't Accuse Me of Blaming America when I Blame the Government -- 31 - Extreme Aggregation Misleads Macroeconomists and the Fed.

32 - Why do so Many People Automatically and Angrily Condemn Historical Revisionism? -- 33 - Where should the Burden of Proof Rest? -- 34 - Politics and Markets: A Highly Misleading Analogy -- 35 - Social Science 101: Three Ways to Relate to Other People -- 36 - Ten Fallacious Conclusions in the Dominant Ideology's Political Economy -- 37 - Regime Uncertainty: Some Clarifications -- 38 - Not Every Intellectual Gunman is a Hired Gun -- 39 - Truth and Freedom in Economic Analysis and Economic Policymaking -- 40 - Austrian Economics: The Queen of the Experimental Sciences -- 41 - Not All Countries are Analytically Equal -- 42 - Creative Destruction-The Best Game in Town -- 43 - Thinking is Research, Too! -- Part III - Money, Debt, Interest Rates, and Prices -- 44 - Macroeconomic Booms and Busts: Déjà Vu Once Again -- 45 - The Continuing Puzzle of the Hyperinflation that hasn't Occurred -- 46 - Money versus Monetary Base: An Elementary Yet Critical Distinction -- 47 - The Euthanasia of the Saver -- 48 - The Fed's Immiseration of People who Live on Interest Earnings -- 49 - Extraordinary Demand to Hold Cash: The Mystery Persists -- 50 - More Monetary Peculiarities of the Past Five Years -- 51 - A Bogus Example of Controlling Inflation with Price Controls -- 52 - Monetary Policy and Heightened Price Volatility in Raw Materials Markets -- Part IV - Investment and Regime Uncertainty -- 53 - Regime Uncertainty: Are Interest-Rate Movements Consistent with the Hypothesis? -- 54 - Do the Post-Panic Changes in Corporate Bond Yield Curves Indicate Regime Uncertainty or Only Expectations of Increased Inflation? -- 55 - The Great Divergence: Private Investment and Government Power in the Present Crisis -- 56 - Private Business Net Investment Remains in a Deep Ditch -- 57 - The Confidence Fairy versus the Animal Spirits: Not Really a Fair Fight.

58 - Important New Evidence on Regime Uncertainty -- 59 - The Sluggish Recovery of Real Net Domestic Private Business Investment -- 60 - Government Spending and Regime Uncertainty-A Clarification -- Part V - Boom, Bust, and Macroeconomic Policy -- 61 - World War II: Still Being Touted as the Quintessential Keynesian Miracle -- 62 - One More Time: Consumption Spending has Already Recovered -- 63 - U.S. Economic Recovery Remains Anemic, at Best -- 64 - Likely Fiscal and Monetary Legacies of the Current Crisis -- 65 - Counsel of Despair? -- 66 - Unprecedented Household Deleveraging since 2007 -- 67 - An Overview of Recent Changes in Federal Finances -- Part VI - Labor Markets -- 68 - Will the Real Rate of Unemployment Please Stand Up? -- 69 - Short-Term Employment Changes in Longer-Term Perspective -- 70 - Cessation of Labor Force Growth since 2008 -- 71 - Labor Markets are Still in Bad Shape -- Part VII - Libertarianism -- 72 - Are Questions of War and Peace Merely One Issue among Many for Libertarians? -- 73 - Freedom: Because it Works or because it's Right? -- 74 - The Salmon Trap: An Analogy for People's Entrapment by the State -- 75 - Libertarian Wishful Thinking -- 76 - "There were Giants in the Earth in those Days": Genesis 6:4 -- 77 - The Rodney Dangerfields of the Ideological Universe -- 78 - Classical Liberalism's Impossible Dream -- 79 - Why the Precationary Principle Counsels us to Renounce Statism -- 80 - Modern Communications Technology-Savior or Soma? -- 81 - On My Libertarian Catholicity -- Part VIII - Remembrances of Parents, Teachers, Colleagues, and Comrades -- 82 - William Jess Higgs (March 21, 1909-October 15, 1977) -- 83 - Work in Progress: A Boy and His Mom -- 84 - Murray N. Rothbard: In Memoriam -- 85 - Jürg Niehans (November 8, 1919-April 23, 2007) -- 86 - R. Max Hartwell (1921-2009) -- 87 - Manuel F. Ayau (1925-2010).

88 - Joseph Sobran (1946-2010) -- 89 - Morris David Morris (February 10, 1921-March 12, 2011) -- 90 - Siobhan Reynolds: A True American Heroine (1961-2011) -- 91 - Anna Jacobson Schwartz (November 11, 1915-June 21, 2012) -- 92 - Thomas S. Szasz (1920-2012) -- 93 - James M. Buchanan (October 3, 1919-January 9, 2013) -- 94 - Armen Alchian (April 12, 1914-February 19, 2013) -- 95 - Robert William Fogel (July 1, 1926-June 11, 2013) -- 96 - Donald S. Barnhart (July 18, 1925-September 8, 2009) -- Part IX - Just for Fun -- 97 - Mainstream Economists will have a Blast at this Year's Halloween Parties -- 98 - "American Pie": Altered to Lament My Life and Times as an Economist -- 99 - A Vulgar Keynesian Visits My Chamber -- Index -- About the Author -- Praise for Taking a Stand -- Back Cover.

In his academic work, Robert Higgs has dissected the government's shrewd secret excesses that lead to the Welfare State, the Warfare State, and the Administrative State. For several decades he has unstintingly chronicled the federal, state, and local governments' malfeasance in these many areas of life that all levels of government have intruded upon without Constitutional mandate. In this book, however, are essays that show a whimsical, introspective, and personal side of this world renowned scholar. From the myth that the government has derived its powers from the consent of the governed to the role of independent experts in formulating monetary and fiscal policy; from the government's duplicity in announcing the unemployment rate in a given month to how the state entraps us, if you want to see a true polymath at work, these lofty, serious, sad, and illuminating essays will educate you beyond what you had thought possible about life, liberty, and the economy.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.