Cato Event Podcast

The single most important economic and sociological change in our society in the past 60 years has been the entry of women into the labor market. Our public policy institutions have not kept apace. Tax law, labor law, and a host of other institutions are still designed to favor women who remain in the home and are often unfair to married women who enter the labor market. Many changes in tax law, e...

Although Americans generally think of global trade only in terms of economics, the free exchange of goods and services between nations can also have important political effects. With America's attention increasingly turned toward the Middle East, the role of free trade in sparking peaceful reform must not be forgotten. To counter the threat from al-Qaeda we must fight with ideas as well as bullets...

Belarus attained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Since he took power in 1994, however, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko has cracked down on his opponents and rigged successive elections. Today, Belarus lacks basic political freedoms, including the freedoms of the press, association, and expression. The Belarusian economy continues to be run according to the discredited socialist...

As the War on Drugs continues to fill America's prisons with nonviolent offenders, many cities and states are looking at mandatory treatment as an alternative to incarceration. Although treatment is generally preferable to prison, not all methods of treating drug addiction are the same. Some methods, particularly the "tough love" programs aimed at teens and adolescents, have documented records of...

Since Enron's collapse in 2002, the federal government has stepped up its campaign against white-collar crime. In Trapped: When Acting Ethically Is against the Law , John Hasnas compellingly illustrates how the campaign against corporate fraud has gone overboard. Hasnas debunks the common assumption that the law only mandates ethical behavior. That may have been true 20 years ago, but no longer. H...

The idea that the United States needs a standing nation-building office has gained strong bipartisan support in Congress. The arguments in favor of such an office are rooted in the belief that failed states are threats to U.S. national security. But do failed states pose such a threat? Further, to the extent that they do, would a permanent nation-building office succeed in averting or remedying st...

The election of Mwai Kibaki to the Kenyan presidency in 2002 was meant to put an end to the pervasive culture of corruption in that country. One of Kibaki's first acts as head of state was to appoint John Githongo as his anti-corruption czar. Under Kibaki's rule, however, corruption in Kenya continued unabated, and Githongo resigned his position in 2005 and moved to Great Britain. Githongo has imp...

On Tuesday, March 28, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , which concerns a legal challenge to the military tribunals that are seeking to try certain prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay for war crimes. The Bush administration maintains that the president can convene military tribunals to try and punish enemy combatants for offenses against the law of war. Others d...

Congress has been moving rapidly toward enacting new ethics and lobbying regulations. Such regulations have consequences for the elections in the fall, the public's views of Congress as an institution, and the basic political rights of all Americans. Please join us for an examination of the proposed ethics and lobbying regulations by Bradley A. Smith, former chairman of the Federal Election Commis...

Many conservatives questioned the wisdom and efficacy of using the U.S. military for humanitarian missions in Somalia in 1993 and Haiti in 1994. More recently, however, voices on both the left and the right have called for U.S. military intervention in Darfur, Congo, and elsewhere. What should trigger U.S. military intervention? Some observers advocate an expansive definition of the national inter...

Russia has become richer but less free since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000. Andrei Illarionov will describe how the Kremlin's policy decisions in the past few years have given rise to a new corporate state in which state-owned enterprises are governed by personal interests and private corporations have become subject to arbitrary intervention to serve state interests. The reductio...

Bruce Bartlett, a veteran of the Reagan White House and Treasury Department, argues that George W. Bush has betrayed the Reagan legacy by expanding the size and scope of the federal government and letting the federal budget mushroom out of control. He charges that the Medicare expansion of 2003 may be "the worst legislation in history" and raises the question of whether Bill Clinton was a better f...

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when large companies and powerful governments reigned supreme over the little guy. But new technologies are empowering individuals like never before, and the Davids of the world—the amateur journalists, musicians, and owners of small businesses—are suddenly making a huge economic and social impact. In An Army of Davids , author Glenn Reynold...

The Constitution was written and ratified to secure liberty through limited government. Central to its design were two principles: federalism and economic liberty. But at the beginning of the 20th century, Progressives began a frontal assault on those principles. Drawing on the new social sciences and a primitive understanding of economic relationships, their efforts reached fruition during the Ne...

Despite a federal budget deficit of about $400 billion, President Bush and Republicans in Congress say that spending is under control and that the budget outlook is improving. Proposed spending growth in President Bush's fiscal year 2007 budget is below the large increases of prior years. But are the White House and Congress doing enough to restrain spending? What will happen to the budget as enti...

The federal government grows each year. Taxes rise and regulations pile higher — and our quality of life suffers. Bristling with data and drama, Size Matters warns of big government's measurable negative impact on the lives of ordinary Americans. The book argues that excessive government reduces family income, drives up the cost of housing and health care, hurts employment, and stifles vital...

Parental choice is the most contentious educational policy issue in America, and no choice plan is more closely watched than the District of Columbia’s school voucher program. Critics of parental choice frequently allege that such programs would increase costs and that public schools would suffer. In "Spreading Freedom and Saving Money," economists Susan Aud and Leon Michos analyze the impact of t...

There is one issue that could lead to a disastrous war between the United States and China. That issue is the fate of Taiwan. A growing number of Taiwanese want independence for their island and regard mainland China as an alien nation. Mainland Chinese consider Taiwan a province that was stolen from China more than a century ago, and their patience about getting it back is wearing thin. Washingto...

Franklin is back! With the creative assistance of a direct descendant, Ben Franklin has now finished writing his memoirs. When Franklin died in 1790, he left unrecorded the last 33 years of his illustrious career as signer of the Declaration of Independence, ambassador to France, and delegate to the Constitutional Convention. Now the rest of the story can be told. Mark Skousen, a university profes...

The United States has signed free trade agreements with four Middle Eastern countries--Israel, Jordan, Morocco, and Bahrain--and plans to sign a fifth with Oman this month. The hope behind the U.S. policy is that expanding economic freedom and openness in the Middle East will create private-sector opportunities in a region plagued by high trade barriers and stagnant growth. Can freer markets bring...

The promotion of democracy is a top foreign policy priority for both Republicans and Democrats. Many political scientists argue that promoting democracy is sound policy because democracies do not go to war with each other; thus, more democracies should equal less war. But what are the risks of democratization? In Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War, Edward D. Mansfield and Jack S...

The federal criminal justice system is in disarray. Each week some 1,200 people are sentenced in federal court, but the legality of these sentences is suddenly in doubt. That is because the Supreme Court recently held that the constitutional right to trial by jury requires that any factor that can be used to increase the amount of prison time that a defendant will serve must be proven to a jury be...

David Boaz is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute, and has played a key role in both the Institute's development and the growth of the American libertarian movement at large. Charles Murray is a political scientist, author, and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. William A. Galston currently holds the Ezra Zilkha Chair in the Brookings Institution's Governance Studies Prog...