Cato Podcast

The impulse to trust experts and vest them with the power to make decisions for us gives rise to central planning's worst abuses. It's a powerful impulse that freedom's champions must work to overcome. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nonprofit universities make money, but they expense those profits away in various ways that don't help students or taxpayers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The next head of the Department of Health and Human Services will wield more power than predecessor Kathleen Sebelius Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Social Security regrets its sins-of-the-fathers grab at grown kids' tax refunds. The plan would have allowed the government to claw back sometimes decades-old overpayments at the expense of the recipients' children. What comes next? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Internal Revenue Service is trying to license tax preparers without approval from Congress. If the scheme is allowed to continue, small tax preparers could be put out of business. That may be just fine with big box providers like H&R Block. Dan Alban represents some of these tax preparers in federal court. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Change is coming to higher education, but it won't be easy and it won't be popular. Glenn Reynolds argues that decades of federal subsidies and piles of student debt have not given us better outcomes for students. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

An improved standard of living depends on experimentation with new ideas, but politicians always seem to insist that innovators seek permission first. Author Adam Thierer argues they have it precisely backwards. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party emerged victorious in elections there, but the swelling concentration of power into his office has been troubling to more than just his opposition. An ultranationalist, anti-Semitic party also made large gains in the parliament. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Federal Reserve's record over the past century includes the Great Depression, the Great Inflation and the Financial Crisis in 2008. Is it time for a monetary commission to examine the Fed's record in greater detail? Event: The Fed’s 100th Anniversary and the Case for a Centennial Monetary Commission Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributed mightily to the financial crisis. The bailouts delivered to Fannie and Freddie were much larger than those received by many other financial firms, but opposition remains to winding the two firms down. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Contributions to candidates as individual acts don't corrupt the political process, so what about contributions overall? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The kidney shortage in the United States is expensive for those affected. And if it's too expensive, it's often fatal. Iran has dramatically alleviated the kidney shortage by allowing donors to be compensated. The Kidney Sellers: A Journey of Discovery in Iran Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's easy to laugh at North Korea's backwardness, but that laughter encourages us to ignore the government's brutality in the least free nation on earth. Michael Malice, in his new book, attempts to demystify the regime. DEAR READER: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bills to raise revenue are supposed to start in the U.S. House. So why did ObamaCare receive the "gut and replace" treatment when it arrived in the Senate? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The President's plan to reform National Security Agency surveillance would nullify one form of bulk collection of Americans' phone records, but leaks about NSA implicate the agency is a far wider range of mischief. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The number of states with zero school choice options gets smaller every year. Bob Bowdon of Choice Media evaluates the state of educational freedom for children in the United States. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tesla Motors makes "premium electric" automobiles, but some state-level protectionists don't like that Tesla owns its own dealerships. Tesla and the Red-State Blues Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sanctions on foreign countries that do bad things don't tend to achieve the desired results, but what about lifting punitive trade restrictions on countries in need? Bill Watson calls them "anti-sanctions." Let's Try Anti-Sanctions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Supreme Court will soon have another chance to rein in police searches of our personal electronics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Even on humanitarian grounds, the war in Libya didn't help the people of that country prosper, says Benjamin H. Friedman. Did the Military Intervention in Libya Succeed? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When should your right to free expression be trumped by the demands of antidiscrimination laws? Choosing What to Photograph Is a Form of Speech Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There was a time in the United States when young children roamed free of the fear of kidnapping or other horrible fates. The world has gotten much safer since then. Quit Bubble-Wrapping Our Kids! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The NSA's use of hijacked botnets and fake Facebook pages are aimed at gathering intelligence on a massive scale, whether or not those surveilled are suspected of any wrongdoing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The head of the Senate intelligence committee accuses the CIA of surveilling and intimidating Senate staffers as they attempted to learn more about alleged CIA abuses. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The IRS is a political agency. It's been used against political opponents going back to at least the 1960s. New proposed rules governing nonprofits that lobby Congress could muzzle those groups when they want to talk to their own members. David Keating is President of the Center for Competitive Politics. Censorship Through the Tax Code: How the Proposed IRS Rules for Social Welfare Groups Stifle P...