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Is liberty or democracy the primary constitutional value? At a time when Americans are increasingly facing violations of their civil liberties, Timothy Sandefur's insightful new book explains why the Declaration of Independence, with its doctrines on the primacy of liberty, the natural rights of man, and the limits on legitimate government, should serve as the guidepost for understanding the Constitution. The author takes the reader through the ideas of substantive due process and judicial activism and defends them from mainstream criticisms while drawing on examples from literature, television, and Supreme Court cases. The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty argues that modern legal doctrines, which value democracy over liberty, are endangering individual rights and corrupting our civic institutions.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan said, It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed. A little more than 25 years later, Barack Obama declared the Reagan Revolution over. This book surveys the highlights and low points of the nearly 30-year struggle to limit American government, set against the big-government world of the New Deal and the Great Society. The book assesses Reagan's successes and failures, and looks at the 1994 election as a mandate to resume Reagan's efforts. It explores George W. Bush's rejection of limited government in favor of high spending, a mixture of religion and government, and a floundering crusade to bring democracy to the Middle East. Finally, it asks whether the elections of 2006 and 2008 were a rejection of the limited government message or just a repudiation of the failed Bush presidency.

America's health care troubles largely stem from a great success: modern medicine can do much more today than in the past. So what's the trouble? How to pay for it. In easily comprehensible prose, MIT-trained economist Arnold Kling explains better ways of financing health care for the poor, workers, the disabled, and the elderly. Kling predicts relying less on government and more on private savings would improve health outcomes. A must-read for health care reformers.

Updated edition with a new preface. Interweaving historical scholarship, legal analysis, and trenchant cultural commentary, The Cult of the Presidency traces America's decades‐long drift from the Framers' vision for the presidency: a constitutionally constrained chief magistrate charged with faithful execution of the laws.

Now newly expanded, Financial Fiasco digs deep into the foundation of the economic meltdown, revealing how it was the product of conscious actions by consumers, as well as decisionmakers in companies, government agencies, and political institutions. An easily accessible work written for general readers, Financial Fiasco tells the compelling story of how ate-cutting by the Federal Reserve inflated the real estate market and fueled increased risk-taking in the financial markets; how new government policies to promote home ownership blasted air into the credit bubble; how new financial instruments, credit-rating requirements, and accounting rules intended to prevent cheating backfired; and much more. Financial Fiasco guides readers through a world of irresponsible behavior, warns that many of the "solutions" being implemented repeat the mistakes that caused the crisis, and offers guidance on how to move forward.

Unlock the power of shareholder capitalism -- a system that transcends zero-sum games and Wall Street stereotypes. In its essence, shareholder capitalism enables mutually beneficial trade, a concept ingrained in our human history for over 300,000 years. This approach fosters specialization, fuels innovation, and propels economic growth. In this engaging new book, David McLean explains how embracing shareholder capitalism doesn't negate the significance of other institutions; rather, it allows businesses to excel in providing the goods, services, and jobs that make society better off. Shareholder capitalism isn't about disregarding stakeholders; it thrives on mutually beneficial partnerships, and managers are entrusted to maximize shareholder value, focusing on companies' long-term success, which drives overall prosperity. Profits, the ultimate measure of value, steer businesses toward creating goods and services that benefit society. While shareholder capitalism is the overarching theme in Finance 101 courses, it is increasingly criticized, especially with the popularization of concepts like ESG investing and stakeholder capitalism. McLean argues that corporate social responsibility, while well-intentioned, shouldn't replace the democratic process in policymaking, and can lead to unintended consequences. Our journey through capitalism, beginning around 1800, has brought unprecedented prosperity, and it's essential to safeguard this system for the betterment of society, with democracy and free trade as our guiding beacons.

A quick¿¿reference guide to reforms that state and federal policymakers must enact to make health care better, more affordable, more secure, and more universal.Health care in the United States is not a free market. In many ways, U.S. residents are less free to make their own health decisions than residents of other nations. Government controls a larger share of health spending in the United States than in Canada, the United Kingdom, and most other advanced nations. State and federal governments subsidize low¿¿quality medical care and penalize high¿¿quality care. They block innovations that would otherwise reduce medical prices. Congress even funds veterans benefits in a way that increases the likelihood of war.Fortunately, there are corners of the U.S. health sector where market forces have had room to breathe. In those areas, markets have made health care better, more affordable, and more secure. They have made health care more universal-both in the United States and in nations that supposedly already had universal health care. Sometimes, market forces develop such innovations despite government policies that exist explicitly to block them.Those sorts of innovations should be exploding across the United States and the world, bringing affordable health care to low¿¿income patients and driving high¿¿cost and low¿¿quality providers and insurers out of business. But they aren't.Recovery shows that making health care as universal as possible requires ending all barriers that government places in the way of better, more affordable, and more secure health care.

Everyone from Bono to the United Nations is looking for a miracle to bring schooling within reach of the poorest children on Earth. James Tooley found one hiding in plain sight. While researching private schools in India for the World Bank, and worried he was doing little to help the poor, Tooley wandered into the slums of Hyderabad's Old City. Shocked to find it overflowing with tiny, parentfunded schools filled with energized students, he set out to discover if schools like these could help achieve universal education. Named after Mahatma Gandhi's phrase for the schools of pre-colonial India, The Beautiful Tree recounts Tooley's journey from the largest shanty town in Africa to the hinterlands of Gansu, China. It introduces readers to the families and teachers who taught him that the poor are not waiting for educational handouts. They are building their own schools and educating themselves. ,

"Over the past two centuries, humanity has experienced unprecedented progress. Extreme poverty has declined, life expectancy has doubled, illiteracy has declined. While we as a species are becoming more prosperous, more educated, healthier, and more peaceful, it is useful to remind ourselves of the underlying cause of this progress: innovation. Human innovation--whether it be new ideas, inventions, or systems-is the primary way people create wealth and escape poverty. The health and wealth of the modern world rests on the shoulders of dozens of unsung heroes whose work has saved millions, if not billions, of lives. Despite their contribution to improving humanity, few people know the names of these pioneers. Heroes of Progress takes readers on a journey through the lives of the most important people who have ever lived. From agronomists whose hybrid crops saved billions of lives and intellectuals who changed public policy for the better, to businesspeople whose innovations helped millions rise from poverty, or scientists whose medical breakthroughs eliminated diseases and ended pandemics. If it weren't for the heroes profiled in this book, we'd all be far poorer, sicker, hungrier, ignorant, and less free--if we were fortunate enough to be alive at all. Considering their impact on humanity, perhaps it's time to learn their story?"--

In this annual review from the Cato Institute, leading legal scholars analyze the 2022-2023 Supreme Court term, specifically the most important and far-reaching cases of the year, plus cases coming up. Now in its 22nd edition, the Review is the first scholarly journal to appear after the term's end and the only one grounded in the nation's first principles, liberty, and limited government.

Empowering the New American Worker identifies what Cato Institute scholars believe to be the most important market-oriented policies for today's American worker, covering a broad array of issues including education, housing, remote work, health care, child care, transportation, criminal justice, and licensing.Since at least 2016, policymakers on both the right and the left have lamented the plight of the American worker and promised to fix it. Unfortunately, the most common "pro-worker" policies today -- heavy on government intervention in labor, trade, or other markets -- suffer from critical flaws. They overlook the numerous laws and regulations that distort markets, harm American workers, and breed economic sclerosis. They ignore market¿based solutions that can boost workers' independence, mobility, wealth, resilience, and quality of life-all without the inevitable economic and political problems that come with more spending and bureaucracy. And, perhaps most importantly, they target an "American worker" that often bears little resemblance to the U.S. workforce's complex and ever¿changing reality, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.Recent trends in manufacturing, remote work, independent work, globalization, and other areas argue for new policies for a New American Worker. Instead of promoting a certain kind of job, promising cradle-to-grave protection from disruption, or presuming that the employment and lifestyle trends of today will last beyond tomorrow, policymakers should seek to maximize Americans' autonomy, mobility, and living standards.Each chapter of Empowering the New American Worker identifies the problems facing American workers and suggests pro-market ways for federal, state, and local officials to better address these challenges. These policies will give individuals the freedom and resources they need to be the American worker they want to be -- not the one many policymakers think they should be -- and to be happier and more prosperous in the process.

Most American adults easily recognize the following description of the 2008 financial crisis. Unregulated Wall Street firms (so-called shadow banks) made too many risky bets with derivatives, causing the housing bubble to burst. The contagious run through the financial system was only arrested by bailouts from the federal government and major regulatory changes. But what if the record demonstrates that the core of this story is misleading and the resulting regulations are misguided? Now, almost 15 years later, the Biden administration is using this same story to promote more regulations for money market mutual funds (a key part of the supposedly dangerous shadow banking system) and even to justify allowing only federally insured banks to issue stablecoins (a type of cryptocurrency that didn't exist in 2008). But most of the post-2008 regulatory efforts were concentrated in the traditional banking sector-not the shadow banking sector-which warrants skepticism toward the conventional story of the 2008 crisis and any new regulations based on that story.This new book from explores the main problems with the conventional story about the 2008 crisis and explains why it does not justify expanding bank-like regulations throughout financial markets to mitigate systemic risks.

Centers of Progress: Forty Cities that Changed the World takes readers on a journey through history's greatest urban centers.

An insider's account of the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic's disruption of our mortgage, housing, and financial markets.

Can the government do that? Check the Constitution! The Cato Institute's Pocket Constitution is the perfect read at any time of the year.

Throughout our history, Americans have been a highly religious people. Indeed, many of the original colonists came to the New World specifically to escape religious persecution. And though somewhat less devout than we once were, the United States still leads the developed world in religiosity. Today, however, many feel that religious freedom is under serious--perhaps unprecedented--threat. With everything from health-insurance mandates, to the censoring of high school graduation speeches, to punishing vendors who refuse to work gay weddings, religious liberty seems to be increasingly curbed by powerful and intrusive government.What should we do when a law or government action, often not intended to inhibit religious exercise, nevertheless does? How much of a connection between church and state is "too much," such that it infringes on the rights of nonbelievers? How can we maximize harmony between religious and nonreligious Americans? In June 2016, the Cato Institute's Protecting Religious Liberties conference sought to answer those questions. The conference speakers addressed the history and philosophy of religious freedom, religious freedom and education, and current controversies over religious freedom and public accommodations. This volume contains essays adapted from presentations and discussions at the conference, as well as new introductory and concluding essays.

Populism and the Future of the Fed features highly readable essays that provide a broad perspective on core issues-including the populist challenge to Fed independence, fiscal dominance and the return of inflation, the limits of Fed power versus the expansion of its dual mandate, and the strange world of helicopter money and fiscal QE.

The fourth edition of this study ranks the American states according to how their public policies affect individual freedoms in the economic, social, and personal spheres.

This short but accessible book provides an argument that the Lockean revolution in Christianity¿which reconciled faith with freedom¿is both desperately necessary and also promisingly possible in Islam.

Economics in One Virus provides an introduction to timeless economic insights using the case study of COVID-19.

What do we mean by liberalism or liberal history? It seems that every scholar in the social sciences would like to define liberalism in their own way. Certainly there is plenty of room for differences of opinion on this matter. But defining any "-ism" requires circumscribing a set of beliefs or drawing lines in such a way as to connect ideas that we believe form a coherent tradition.Liberal history is primarily concerned with ideas and with the reasons why individuals acted as they did in the past. Liberal historians prefer to study themes of power and liberty, particularly as they relate to the rise and fall of political systems that protect liberties and individual rights. As the selections in this reader show, the liberal approach to the past is generally skeptical of laws of history and suggestions of historical determinism.

As the United States adjusts to a changing global balance of power, nuclear deterrence is poised to return to a level of importance in U.S. national security not seen since the end of the Cold War. However, U.S. nuclear strategy will have to contend with emerging issues like arms control in a multipolar world, the evolution of strategic technology, and the new contours of great power competition.America’s Nuclear Crossroads: A Forward-Looking Anthology is a useful reference tool for policymakers and laypeople alike as they navigate an increasingly complex nuclear security environment. The debates and policy decisions that play out over the next few years will likely affect America’s nuclear deterrence and arms control strategies for decades to come. This anthology offers a wide view of the most pressing challenges the United States is facing at this crossroads. While it cannot resolve every emerging problem, we hope America’s Nuclear Crossroads sparks a broader dialogue and offers some initial recommendations for solving said challenges.