November

Aid to Owners of Dependent Enterprises by Charles W Baird Ending corporate welfare as we know it. The Socialist Dream Lives by K. 1. Billingsley The U.N. refuses to face reality. Global Interventionism and the Erosion of Domestic Liberty by Ted Galen Carpenter How U.S. f9reign policy has harmed the nation economically, socially, and politically. The Seven~eadly Sins of High Taxes by Christopher Lee Confiscatory levies work much mischief. TV Taxes by Raymond J. Keating Stay tuned as Big Brother continues to meddle. How Fair Is "Fair Housing"? by George C. Leef There's nothing fair about coercing property owners. Technology and the Work Force: Work Will Not End by Donald K. Jonas Probing the hype and reality of the social pessimists. Business and Morality in a Free Society by Edward W Younkins Capitalism creates an environment in which virtue can flourish. The Minimum Wage by Kevin Sohr and Walter Block Rising rates hurt poor, young, and unskilled workers.

Loved to Death: America's Unresolved Health-Care Crisis by Michael J. Hurd Why "compassionate" government can't meet all our health-related demands. Electrical Utilities: The Final Deregulatory Frontier by Doug Bandow How competition could transform an industry. Edward Coke-Common Law Protection for Liberty by Jim Powell The legacy of a great English jurist. COLUMNS NOTES from FEE-Juvenile Delinquency by Donald J. Boudreaux IDEAS and CONSEQUENCES-Educating the Difficult by Lawrence W Reed POTOMAC PRINCIPLES-elosing Special Interest Government by Doug Bandow ECONOMICS on TRIAL-Great Turnabouts in Economics by Mark Skousen DEPARTMENTS Perspective-Dennis L. Peterson; V. Orval Watts; Leonard E. Read Book Reviews -Everybody Wins! A Life in Free Enterprise by Gordon Cain, reviewed by Robert L. Bradley, Jr.; Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism by Sanford Ikeda, reviewed by E. C. Pasour, Jr.; Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets by Robert Kuttner, reviewed by Raymond 1. Keating; A Sacred Union of Citizens-George Washington's Farewell Address and the American Character by Matthew Spalding and Patrick Garrity, reviewed by George C. Leef.

THEFREEMAN IDEAS ON LIBERTY Published by The Foundation for Economic Education Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 Phone (914) 591-7230 FAX (914) 591-8910 E-mail: freeman@westnet.com FEE Home Page: http://www.fee.org President: Donald J. Boudreaux Managing Editor: Beth A. Hoffman Guest Editor: Doug Bandow Editor Emeritus Paul L. Poirot Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Book Review Editor George C. Leef Adjunct Professor of Law and Economics, Northwood University Editorial Assistant Mary Ann Murphy Columnists Doug Bandow Cato Institute, Washington, D.C. Lawrence W. Reed Mackinac Center for Public Policy Midland, Michigan Mark Skousen Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida Contributing Editors Charles W. Baird California State University, Hayward Peter J. Boettke Manhattan College Clarence B. Carson American Textbook Committee Wadley, Alabama Thomas J. DiLorenzo Loyola College, Baltimore, Maryland Joseph S. Fulda New York, New York Bettina Bien Greaves Resident Scholar, FEE John Hospers University of Southern California Tibor R. Machan Auburn University Ronald Nash Reformed Theological Seminary Edmund A. Opitz Chatham, Massachusetts James L. Payne Sandpoint, Idaho Jim Powell Westport, Connecticut William H. Peterson Adjunct Scholar, Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.

Sheldon Richman The Future of Freedom Foundation Jane S. Shaw PERC, Bozeman, Montana Richard H. Timberlake University of Georgia The Freeman is the monthly publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-an-Hudson, NY 10533. FEE, established in 1946 by Leonard E. Read, is a nonpolitical, educational champion of private property, the free market, and limited government. FEE is classified as a 26 USC 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Copyright © 1997 by The Foundation for Economic Education. Permission is granted to reprint any article in this issue, except "Edward Coke," provided credit is given and two copies of the reprinted material are sent to FEE. The costs of Foundation projects and services are met through dona tions, which are invited in any amount. Donors of $30.00or more receive a subscription to The Freeman. Student subscriptions are $10.00 for the nine-month academic year; $5.00 per semester. Additional copies of this issue of The Freeman are $3.00 each. For foreign delivery, a donation of $45.00 a year is suggested to cover mailing costs.

Bound volumes of The Freemanare availablefrom The Foundation for calendar years 1972 to date. The Freeman is available in microform from University Microfilms, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48106. PERSPECTIVE Public School Failures, Homeschool Successes Once almost unheard-of and usually rele gated to the province of educational quackery and political or religious radicalism, the homeschooling movement has in the last few years blossomed into a serious educational option. A recent study by the National Home Education Research Institute and the Home school Legal Defense Association demon strates just how serious an alternative it has become. Conducted by researcher Dr. Brian D. Ray, the report made a number of startling finds: • The number of students being home schooled across the nation is between 1,103,000 and 1,348,000. • The total number of homeschoolers equals the public school enrollments of the states of Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Montana, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming combined.

• Homeschoolers outperform public school students by 30 to 37 percentile points on all subjects on standardized achievement tests. • Whether the parents ever held a teaching certificate had virtually no impact on student scores. Even homeschooled students whose mothers never finished high school scored 55 percentile points higher than public school students in similar circumstances. • Homeschoolers scored between the 82nd and 92nd percentiles regardless of their fam ilies' incomes. • Students scored at the 86th percentile whether states imposed strict or minimal regulations. • Homeschooling parents pay an average of $546 per year, whereas the average per pupil expenditure by public schools is $5,325, excluding all capital costs. • Homeschoolers' test scores tend to in crease the longer they are homeschooled, going from the 59th percentile for those who have been homeschooled for one year to the 650 92nd percentile for those who have been homeschooled for seven years.

• More than half (53 percent) of all home schoolers visit a library at least once or twice a month; 38 percent of them make three to five visits a month. • The average home schooled child is in volved in 5.2 community activities, such as volunteer work, classes outside the home, group sports, and church. An astounding 98 percent are involved in two or more activities. • Only six percent of homeschoolers, in contrast to 62 percent of public school stu dents, watch three hours or more of television each day. • About 61 percent of homeschoolers are in grades K-6, more than 18 percent are in grades 7-8, and almost 20 percent are in grades 9-12. • Three percent of homeschooling parents PERSPECTIVE intend to continue doing so through grade 6 or less; 89 percent plan to homeschool through grade 12. In short, home schooling not only works, but is helping to erode the public school monop oly. The more this message gets out, the more serious will become the homeschooling op tion.

-DENNIS L. PETERSON Mr. Peterson is a homeschooling parent and a frequent contributor to The Freeman, Teach ing Home, and other periodicals. A copy of the complete study, Strengths of Their Own-Home Schoolers Across Amer ica: Academic Achievement, Family Charac teristics, and Longitudinal Traits, may be obtained from the National Home Education Research Institute, P. O. Box 13939, Salem, Oregon 97309, (503) 364 -1490. Forty Years Ago in The Freeman . .. Leonard E. Read: "Change is a law of allliv ing things. That which is not growing is atrophying; that which is not progressing is retrogressing; that which is not emerging is regressing. The authoritarian act, or even thought, is time off from growth, progress, emergence. One cannot be attentive to the inner self while exerting coercion on others. The person who has me on my back holding me down is as permanently fastened on top of me as I am under him. To me, at least, this explains why Lord Acton was right when he said, 'Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.' "For any person to become aware of how little he knows-not a very difficult attain ment-is a sure way to reduce the number of authoritarians by one. Who knows? The awareness might even catch on. And, if it did?

Millions of us would forsake society's most corrosive pastime-meddling in the affairs of others-meddling not only through the polit ical apparatus, but personally. Millions of us could then concentrate on the wholly reward ing venture of freeing ourselves from our own fears, our own superstitions, our own imper fections, our own ignorance. The individual human spirit, neglected while we play the futile and authoritarian game of imposing our wills on others, cries out for its freedom." JI: OrvalWatts:"Every human being's progress depends on the amount of effort that he himself exerts in pursuit of good purposes. "Among the essential conditions for this effort are the opportunities, the risks, and even the obstacles, of freedom." -NOVEMBER 1957 651 THEFREEMAN IDEAS ON LIBERTY The Central Economic Fallacy of the Century by Steven Yates T he late Murray N. Rothbard once pub lished a major article titled "Ten Great Economic Myths." Included on Rothbard's hit list were the notions that deficits are the cause of inflation and that economists can accurately forecast the future. One myth that he didn't cite dominates Washington today: that the economy can be successfully "man aged" from some central point. This idea underlies, directly or indirectly, all of the others Rothbard mentions.