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Many of our current national leaders emerged from the rarefied air of the nation's top law schools. The ideas taught there in one generation often shape national policy in the next. The trouble is our elite law schools keep churning out ideas that are catastrophically bad for America. Schools for Misrule, a new book from Cato scholar Walter Olson, reveals how our nation's law schools have become a hatchery of bad ideas, many of which confer power and status on the schools' graduates and faculty, as law comes to pervade more areas of life.
The dramatic political showdown over unions and collective bargaining in Wisconsin has spread to Ohio and Indiana. Cato scholar Chris Edwards comments, "[C]ollective bargaining is not a 'right' of government workers, but a special privilege that stands in the way of modern and flexible policy management. Hopefully, public sector unions will eventually go the way of private sector unions and the dinosaurs."
A growing number of policymakers are recognizing that the U.S. corporate tax system is a major barrier to economic growth. In a new paper, authors Duanjie Chen and Jack Mintz present estimates of effective corporate tax rates on new capital investment for 83 countries and find the U.S. rate amongst the highest in the OECD. Chen and Mintz argue that a "sharp reduction to the federal corporate rate of 10 percentage points or more combined with tax base reforms would help generate higher growth and ultimately more jobs and income."
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Schools for Misrule
This new book reveals how our nation's law schools have become a hatchery of bad ideas, many of which confer power and status on the schools' graduates and faculty, as law comes to pervade more areas of life.
The False Promise of Green Energy
Offers an outstanding, nearly unprecedented evaluation of claims by green energy and green jobs proponents that we can improve the economy and the environment, almost risk free, by spending billions of dollars on what are ultimately false promises.
Liberty of Contract
Examines the history of the right of individuals to bargain over the terms of their own contracts and shows how this right has been continuously diminished by court decisions and by our country's growing regulatory and welfare state.
The Case for Gold
This landmark book was the minority report from the U.S. Gold Commission in 1982, which evaluated the role of gold in the monetary system. It covers the history of gold in the United States, explains how the breakdown in its use as a financial standard was caused by government, and details the critical need for sound money.
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