I’ve asserted more than once in this space that the government that is most relevant is that which is closest to the people. Each locality has its own unique set of circumstances and in theory voters will choose representatives that will be aligned with their beliefs, interests, standards and approach to the issues. It takes an engaged electorate to make that happen.

Henry Hazlitt was a journalist, literary critic, economist and philosopher. His writings appeared in such publications as the Nation, Wall Street Journal and the New York Times (frequently heading the book review section), H. L. Mencken’s American Mercury and Newsweek. While at Newsweek he wrote Economics in One Lesson, first published in 1946 and in his later years Hazlitt expressed surprise that the book had become his most enduring work. It is eminently readable; it does not contain mathematics or formulae. It presents its case in plain language that is easily understood. According to Lew Rockwell of the Mises Institute, it may be the most popular economics text ever written. He lauds Hazlitt’s message as simple but profound: “The art of economics consists of looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists of tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.”

I often hear from my friends on the left that “free markets” don’t work. They even cite examples of what they call “market failure”. What they are missing is that in order to have a free market, there must be true price discovery; the buyer and the seller must be free to negotiate price. When government interferes with the pricing mechanism, distortions ensue, leading to the erroneous assumption that there has been a market failure.

Every year, on the first Monday in September, we celebrate a holiday called Labor Day. There isn’t a consensus as to when the first Labor Day was observed or even who first came up with the idea; the first incarnations were enacted by municipal and state governments. It became a national holiday in 1894, during the Grover Cleveland administration, says Wikipedia, “to placate unionists following the Pullman Strike” where thousands of US Marshalls and US Army troops were mobilized by the federal government to put an end to it. Today, as it says on the US Department of Labor’s website, we “pay tribute on Labor Day to…the American worker”.

In a few short weeks we are going to bump up against the debt ceiling once again. In reality, the debt ceiling doesn’t really matter. Congress just keeps kicking that can down the road. In fact, focusing on the debt ceiling is just political sleight of hand that distracts from the real issue: the deficit.

West Virginia’s Lois Alt is back in the news again. I’ve mentioned her before in this space. She is the plucky poultry farmer whose family owns the Eight is Enough chicken farm in Hardy County in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. The farm is so named because the Alt family decided to stay small, limiting their production capacity to eight chicken houses. Small that they are, however, they have taken on the Leviathan in a David vs. Goliath style high stakes court battle.