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No Horse Sense

Here’s a letter to the New York Daily News:

Mayor Bill de Blasio promises that, in addition to redistributing incomes in New York City, he’ll also shut down all horse-drawn carriages (“Bill de Blasio says he won’t horse around over New York’s controversial carriages,” Dec. 31).

In other words, while Mr. de Blasio thinks it “inhumane” for entrepreneurs to harness horses with bridles and yokes so that customers can enjoy paid rides, he thinks it noble for politicians to harness some human beings with the yoke of taxes and the bridle of regulation so that other human beings can enjoy free rides.

I say ‘neigh’ to such “Progressivism.”

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030

Thomas Jefferson wrote less than two weeks before he died that

The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

But even more: no one has been born with a saddle on his or her back.

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