| Title | : | Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781596981416 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 232 |
| Publication | : | First published January 10, 2011 |
Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse Reviews
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This book is pure awesome. It reminded me of some things I already knew – e.g., the government sucks and needs to be scaled way (WAY) back because we can definitely do better without it. But it also taught me a lot about some things I only kinda knew, like how bad the war on drugs is and how wasteful the military can be. It got me excited about the growth of libertarian philosophy and Austrian economic thought. It also has a great final chapter on ways to enhance freedom, from jury nullification to the Free State Project. And best of all, the author sticks it to Paul Krugman, the unmitigated ass of Keynesian economics.
At 188 pages, you can’t afford not to read it.
Quotes:
It was not the “free market” that failed us. It was a ginned-up housing market, overheated from political manipulation and artificially low interest rates courtesy of the Federal Reserve. Governments do not “smooth out” or eliminate business cycles. They cause and exacerbate them. Then they cite problems they themselves caused as good reasons for them to expand their authority.
It’s the free market’s fault when the government modifies the government-established rules of a government-established institution, while deposits continue to be guaranteed by the government. Got it?
Since the Fed opened its doors in 1914 following the passage of the Federal Reserve Act in December 1913, the dollar has lost more than 95 percent of its value, after having held its value intact from the beginning of the republic until the creation of the Fed. Most of this debasement of the dollar has taken place since 1971, when the last vestiges of the gold standard were removed and the central bank could inflate the money supply with much greater abandon.
At a time when the Air Force saw its budget increase by 43 percent, the combat air fleet shrank by 51 percent. In 1998, the Navy had 333 battleforce ships. In 2010, the Navy had 287 such ships. In the Army, a 55 percent funding increase yielded three more brigade combat team equivalents – in other words, an increase of a mere 7 percent.
All government can do is impoverish and slow down or even reverse the free market’s natural trend toward higher living standards for the population. It is purely parasitic on the productive efforts of the people.
At the very time market reforms began to take root in parts of the developing world, those areas experienced enormous advances in living standards and dramatic declines in poverty… Indeed, poverty has been reduced more in the past fifty years than in the previous five hundred.
Once people realize the government is giving out a benefit for free, more and more people will place themselves in the condition that entitles them to that benefit, thereby making the program ever more expensive, society poorer, and the system more fragile, as a narrower and narrower base of productive individuals is forced to support an ever-growing population demanding benefits.
Two-thirds of the money assigned to government welfare budgets is eaten up by bureaucracy. Taken by itself, this would mean it would take three dollars in taxes for one dollar to reach the poor. But we must add to this… that the combined public and private costs of taxation amount to 65 cents of every dollar taxed. When we include this factor, we find the cost of the government delivery of one dollar to the poor to be five dollars.
The Department of Education, which we managed to do without for more than 85 percent of our history, is premised on the idea that Americans are too dumb to administer their own schools without handing over tens of billions to the federal government for the privilege of being supervised and pushed around by their betters.
“The policy experts who have evaluated the costs and benefits of drug regulation have almost uniformly concluded that the costs of the regulations are not worth their benefits.” Randall Holcombe
There may be more to the Gates/Buffet stance than meets the eye. For one thing, the estate tax will never hit Microsoft, since, as a publicly help corporation, its owner will never die. Moreover, if repeal of the estate tax were to be made revenue-neutral, additional taxes to make up for the shortfall would very likely fall on corporations. So, if you head a large corporation, you might not want to see the estate tax repealed. A family-owned business, on the other hand, is liable to be devastated by the estate tax. A son inheriting the family business – whose plant and equipment are worth, say, $2 million – from his father and who has been running the business for five years could be hit with a tax bill of $500,000, an amount he couldn’t possibly pay out of the company’s annual profits. He has to sell, and fast. It so happens that an avid buyer of businesses desperate to sell in the face of a massive estate-tax bill is – surprise! – Warren Buffett.
The system wastes “scarce resources churning low-level, nonviolent drug offenders like the homeless man through the system, to no effective purpose.” Judge James P. Gray
Imagine a world in which Walmart supplied people with the various services we today associate with government. Then suppose children in Walmart schools learned all about the wonders of Walmart, how it alone guarantees their safety, protects them from their own foolish decisions, guards them against the exploitation of non-Walmart corporations, and so on. Would we believe it? Or wouldn’t we know, Walmart’s propaganda notwithstanding, that in the absence of Walmart we probably wouldn’t be the heap of helpless boobs it says we’d be, and that we’d probably figure out some way to take care of the problems Walmart says only it can handle?
Money emerged spontaneously in the free market. It was not instituted by government. Only later did governments interfere with it, and not out of a commitment to the public good. Governments wanted to monopolize money creation so they could hand newly created money to favored constituencies.
“An Act of usurpation is not obligatory – it is not law. Any man may be justified in his resistance to it. Let him be considered as a criminal by the General Government – yet his own follow citizens alone can convict him. They are his jury – and if they pronounce him innocent, not all the powers of congress can hurt him – and innocent they certainly will pronounce him, if the supposed law which he resisted was an act of usurpation.” Theophilus Parsons
If stealing is wrong for individuals, then groups of individuals operating under the banner of the state are likewise forbidden from stealing, even if they choose to call it taxation.
It is an unexamined premise of the American political spectrum that society cannot function without a single coercive institution with the power to dispose of the lives and fortunes of over 300 million individuals.
No one considers it legitimate to stick a gun in his neighbor’s ribs and take his things. Yet we are taught to believe a dramatic moral difference separates that kind of direct stealing with the indirect kind – e.g., when the government sticks a gun in your neighbor’s ribs and hands the proceeds to you.
Americans in their twenties and thirties confront an especially grim future unless a radical change in direction occurs very soon… Leaving aside the risible prospect of government pensions and Social Security half a century from now, we can safely say that most of us will never be able to retire. A world in which people’s productive lives ended around age sixty or even earlier will seem like something out of science fiction. The price for the political decisions of previous generations, who enjoyed rather a nice ride while it lasted, had to be paid by someone. It will be paid by us.
“Let’s be blunt about what I am suggesting. I am suggesting that if default is inevitable, and if default is more damaging the longer it is delayed, then it would be a good idea to consider embracing it. We should lance the boil, as it were, and kill of the scam – sooner rather than later. Do you want a life of toil and slavery, followed by ultimate destitution, or do you want to stand up for yourself and fight for the chance at a decent life? It’s your choice.” Kevin Dowd -
While most of this covered ground I am quite familiar with, there was one thing in the book that really elevated it for me -- I have never seen a clearer, more concise, more trenchant explanation of why and how government funding of science is a Very Bad Thing.
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This book is ammunition. If you have a friend who defends the
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Tom Woods begins Rollback by asking “is it already too late?” Before giving a lengthy answer, he points to recent polls that suggests most Americans claim to not trust the federal government; though much like a teenager that insists his parents are clueless – still looks their way for a solution. In answering the question Woods writes, “[t]he coming fiscal crisis is an opportunity to take a careful second look at government... we would not only survive but flourish in the absence of countless institutions we are routinely told we could not live without.”
Woods finishes the first chapter by describing “the crisis.” In short, the crisis being the $14 trillion federal debt (interest payments alone, according to CBO estimates, will cost nearly $1 trillion per year by 2020) and future unfunded liabilities estimated at over $100 trillion ($19.4 trillion of which was added by “small government” George W. Bush's administration, thanks to Medicare Part D). But don't worry, the Republican Party wants to cut the bloated federal budget by $100 billion – Woods writes, “that's like taking $3 off a trip to the moon.” The crisis is not just at the federal level, many States and dozens of cities are facing financial collapse as well.
In Chapter 2, Woods looks at “Barack Obama and 'Change We Can Believe In'” by writing “[t]he looming fiscal crisis didn't originate with Barack Obama, but he sure hasn't helped.” Woods explains “how we got here” and why health care costs are rising (hint: it's not because of any perceived “free market”). Woods does not blame Obama, he explains how Obama is just one in a long line of Presidents who have contributed to the problems in the name of helping the people.
Woods spends the next two chapters explaining how Keynesian economic policies in conjunction with central banking have perpetuated the problems, while perceived deregulation and the “free market” (that doesn't exist) are blamed.
“Three words guarantee the coming federal bankruptcy: 'off the table,'” writes Woods in Chapter 5, “[t]he only area a majority (of American's) would cut (according to a 2010 poll by The Economist) [i]s foreign aid” or roughly 1% of the federal budget. Woods continues, “[t]hat means the only thing on the table is default.”Woods goes on to explain what Frederic Bastiat called “the seen and the unseen” of those items that are off the table, specifically military spending – the largest of the government's sacred cows. Oddly enough, Woods points out, some people argue that military spending is too low, even though the U.S. government spends as much on military as the rest of the world combined.
In a chapter that has me wondering whether Woods is a minarchist, anarchist or voluntaryist, he does a fine job of tackling “The Myth of 'Good Government'.” He writes, “[o]ne of the many reasons it has been so difficult to limit government's growth is that the public has been conditioned to believe that... the government by and large has their best interests at heart.” Woods goes on to smash the propaganda that government is needed to save us from monopolies that would enslave humanity and to save us from ourselves. Before offering some possible solutions to the coming collapse, Woods writes, “Imagine a world in which Walmart supplied people with various services we today associate with government.” If Walmart educated children and broadcast messages “about the wonders of Walmart, how it alone guarantees their safety... and so-on” would you believe it? Or would you see past the lies?
Woods concludes with some possible solutions:
Social Security & Medicare opt-outs.
Across-the-board cuts. Woods writes, “[i]f everything is cut, any of the fiefdoms that protest... will immediately expose themselves as special-interest groups seeking special privileges.”
Currency competition. “Private mints should be allowed to issue coins as money,” Woods writes, “[m]oney... is the very worst commodity for government to monopolize.”
State nullification.
Repeal Amendment. This proposed amendment would or rather should work in conjunction with nullification. If a majority of States disapprove of a federal law, it is repealed.
Self-education.
Crack through the media monopoly – for free. In other words, be the media!
Jury nullification. “The ultimate tool,” Woods writes, “by which the people may deliver a verdict on the laws that govern them.”
Free State Project. The FSP's goal is to get as many liberty-lovers as possible to move to the same State in the hopes to bring “liberty in our lifetime.”
Agorism. “Agorism,” Woods explains, “rejects political activity altogether... Agorism begins with the libertarian premise that individuals have the right to interact... peacefully without the intervention of... the state.” Many people practice agorism without even knowing it; anyone using a radar detector, that has ever had a yard sale without a permit or reporting the proceeds or has ever been paid in cash, “is to some extent an agorist.”
Debt repudiation? Since it is obvious that the federal government can not pay off the federal debt without inflating the currency some suggest the federal government should “default on it honestly.”
Woods concludes by explaining the choice facing you, me and everyone else: “Do you want a life of toil and slavery, followed by ultimate destitution, or do you want to stand up for yourself and fight for the chance of a decent life?” -
Although I agree with almost every word in this book, I still found it disappointing.
For one thing, it doesn’t come close to living up to the promise of the title. Far from providing a roadmap to solving our problem of big government run amuck, it actually documents pretty clearly the institutional forces that drive the relentless growth of government and effectively preclude any hope of “rollback”, large or small. It is a very familiar, convincing and depressing picture and Woods’ call for optimism” in the first chapter -- that the current crisis will provide a “teaching moment rings a bit hollow.
Secondly, I’m afraid the book will not do much to convince those who aren’t already convinced – at least those on the left. Maybe that’s too ambitious to hope for in a volume of less than 200 pages. But the book feels rather thrown together, starting with a sketch of the enormity of today’s fiscal challenge and the cluelessness of Obama Administration’s policies, moving on to a more general critique government in general (all of which would have rung just as true before the current crisis) and concludes with a rather limp list of possible fixes (learn Austrian economics, hope that jury nullification catches on,…). Too much of it feels like a treatise on libertarianism rather than a careful exposition of how truly catastrophic our current situation is. Michael Moore notwithstanding, American government at all levels really is hopelessly “broke” beyond all experience.
So don’t buy this book for your liberal friends – sending them a Tom Woods YouTube video would probably be more effective. But there may be one audience that would benefit by paying attention to this book: the sections on military spending and the futility of the war on drugs just might remove the scales from the eyes of conservatives who often forget their skepticism of government when it comes to these two subjects. I note that Rollback is a monthly choice of the Conservative Book Club. A more modest objective than significantly rolling back the scope of government in the near term may be straightening out the Republican Party.
Make no mistake, Tom Woods is a treasure, and there is nothing to quibble with in the content of this book. But it will take far more than this wake America up. There isn’t much time. -
Woods does a great job here of taking complicated issues...or issues that certain people make complicated... and explaining them in terms that evereybody can understand. The root of the issue is government growing endlessly. Spending more, watching more, wasting more. Woods attacks those low hanging solutions -- things that are most important to do first to get America back to where it needs to be.
Government is out of control financially-- printing whatever money they want to spend, promises of entitlements without any regard for the country's financial situation. Gov is destroying the savings of hardworking productive Americans. Printing more money is not a good thing. More supply of something creates less demand for that thing. It's easy to blame bubbles and plunders on the free market. But the gov messing around with the money supply is just as much of the problem. Have you noticed that not too many people work for a poor person? CEO's and "fat cats" aren't necessarily the bad guys.
Government is out of control legally -- passing legislation to fix supply, make us safer, smarter, better, cleaner. More business tax, more personal tax. All of these things put more burden on the companies (private and public) that are supposed to provide the jobs. How many more people can a business employ in the same year a huge tax hike, or penalty is passed?
Typically I give these kinds of books a 3. But Woods makes some glaring and clear points here...some cited and some not cited. Also, there are plenty of opportuntities to take up further reading from the citations in the book. Overall I say a great read for those well versed in economics and those who just need to find out what's going on.
Lastly, it actually is unfair to Obama that he made the cover of Woods' book. Many Administrations, as well as many Americans in general have contributed to the current and coming financial crises. -
I've always like Thomas Woods. He writes in a way that takes difficult economic concepts--the type to which men like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, and Murray Rothbard would dedicate whole tomes--and makes them easily understandable by the average reader. This book is no different.
In Rollback, he explains how government intervention in the economy has stifled it, causing booms and busts that were either non-existent or much more survivable prior to the Federal Reserve/central banking. But it isn't just intervention in interest rates and money supply that has stifled the economy; it is also intervention through unnecessary regulations that has done so. Furthermore, these regulations cause problems that the government then solves with more regulation.
He explains all of this, then gives examples such as the tech bubble and housing bubble (a result of Federal Reserve intervention), as well as health care, savings and loan, and the housing bubble again (as a result of regulatory intervention).
The book closes with several ways in which we can either encourage or effect the rollback of government intervention. Briefly, some of these are nullification, the Free State Project, and agorism.
If economics and history interest you in any way, or to any degree, I recommend reading this book--and listening to and reading Thomas Woods through any other medium you happen upon. -
If you are depressed with the state of the U.S. you probably shouldn't read this if you want to be cheered up. Mr. Woods looks at the looming crisis, its causes, the deep seated expansionist thinking of the establishment politicians along with the entitlement loving people who want everyone but themselves to get off the gov. dole.
The main theme of this book is the excessive intrusion of the government in our lives and its repercussions. The free market is not responsible for the misshaps that its blamed for, the gov. is involved in every area so there is no truly free market.
Chapter 1: Is it already to late
Chapter 2: Barrack and "Change we can believe in"
Chapter 3: Government and economic crisis
Chapter 4: Fed Reserve & Inflation
Chapter 5: Military Spending (be ready to scream)
Chapter 6: The Myth of Good Government
Chapter 7: Rollback this mess "it starts with the people"
I minus one star for to much repeated information from this book and meltdown. -
This is the book that explains the crisis of 2008 in the most accurate, blunt way possible. There is no book out there that does a better job of it than Woods does in his book. He also points out several philosophical reasons why government is not necessarily good and always looking out for the best interests of the people it governs.
He makes the case that there will be another collapse, even greater than the one we went through in 2008 if the government insists on continuing down the road it has been for the past 30 years.
This book will open your eyes to facts, knowledge, and a way of thinking that you may never have seen before. It will empower you with information that you never knew existed, and so many things about the past 5 years will come to make sense to you in a way that is not described by some talking head on one of the financial news networks. -
It's unfortunate that this book will be looped in as an exclusively anti-Obama screed due to its cover, as it is a great outline of the more libertarian side of conservatism that needs more press. The conclusions are effectively backed up - recognizing that it's a short, pithy book without full documentation. Woods is fairly balanced in his call for cuts, taking an equally savage pen to military spending and waste, as to social programs of dubious intent and failed outcome. Entertaining to read, this is a good reminder that one of the primary outputs of big government is painful unintended consequences at enormous cost.
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A pretty fast , but informative read. Woods refutes some of the conventional wisdom that is peddled today as irrefutable. Citing specific examples, Woods trashes the do-gooders in Washington with his trade-mark snarky wit. He explains some of the most insidious ways in which we are tricked into supporting our military industrial complex and the dirty tricks the use to make it almost impossible to de-fund. What I love so much about Woods' writing is he is first and foremost a historian so he has a really great grasp of history as well as economic history. Excellent one to have on your shelf.
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If you want to go down the rabbit hole and see how far the US government has pushed its luck with regulations, taxes, parasitic social welfare programs, military spending and waste, monetary policy and more - read this book.
It has a good amount of resources for each chapter, should one want to read source material - and he also gives recommendations for other works, should someone want to study economic or political theory further.
I'd recommend it for anyone interested in economics or political theory. -
In a similar theme to Woods' Meltdown, he hammers government ineptitude with little held back. This book is more general in nature and, as its title infers, its theme is rolling back dramatically, government at all levels. Excellent read.
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A must read for all Americans. It is a giant step toward eliminating the prevailing myth taught to us in Junior high that without government intervening in the economy we would all be worked to the bone by greedy capitalists and poisoned by unscrupulous businessmen.
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A great book by Tom exposing the flaws of big government and our upcoming fiscal collapse should we the people accept it. Lots of citations throughout the book! I cannot wait to read his other books!
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50% of households live in a home that is over 25 years old that require deferred maintenance cost (2-3% of appraised home value spent yearly on share upkeep) 25% of households live in a home over 50 years old. The odds of bankruptcy in a home is higher than a divorce in a household.
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This is probably Tom Woods best book. It's radical, but really well written and proving of facts that should really be taken seriously.
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I will vote for any candidate who has read this book.
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I really liked "Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse." This is not supposed to be a detailed look at any one particular issue, but instead is an overview of many of the myths surrounding the economy and politics.
In "Rollback," Woods says that the United States is unsustainable as we know it today. The runaway costs of Medicare and Social Security along with the substantial costs associated with adventurist foreign policy has put the U.S. government so deeply into debt that it will never emerge. Mainstream opinion is content with kicking the can down the road and delaying the inevitable. However, the day of reckoning will come. One of three things will happen when this day of reckoning comes: the U.S. will default on its debts, the Federal Reserve will print money to pay those debts, or huge immediate cuts will be necessary. Based on recent history, the most likely scenario appears to be revving up the printing presses, but this would be the most damaging of the alternatives to the U.S. economy. If we begin to make cuts and tough decisions now, the eventual day of reckoning will not be nearly as momentous, but very few in Washington are willing to even discuss cuts in spending.
For those of you that follow Woods or listen to his show on a consistent basis, there isn't much new or unexpected in here. However, there are a lot of concise arguments in here and references to other works that would be beneficial for those looking to dive deeper into libertarian thought. This is a good beginner book for those that would like an introduction, as well. Woods is a clear writer that brings some humor and snark to the table, so it is a quick and easy read.
