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Fred L. Smith, Jr.
- Hide BioFred L. Smith, Jr. is president and founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, www.cei.org, a free market public policy group and international NGO in Washington D.C.
Fred L. Smith, Jr.'s Archive
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Jul 18, 2011
A reasonable reading of the following 34 brief essays in American Experiment’s newest symposium—What Governmental Services and Benefits Are You Personally Willing to Give Up?—suggests that more Americans than generally assumed may be seriously willing to sacrifice when it comes to major entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. In the interest of balancing the nation’s skewed books, the columns similarly suggest that more people than routinely thought may be willing to forgo various exemptions and other tax breaks, including near-sacred deductions on home mortgage payments.
Jul 15, 2011
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules are supposedly intended to ensure the safety and efficacy of new drugs and medical devices. It is FDA’s technology gatekeeper role—its power to approve or reject medical innovations in a one-size-fits-all fashion—that I would sacrifice willingly.
I seek the freedom to explore the medical frontier, to have access to experimental medicines and medical devices that the FDA has not approved, and to go out (as I’ll explain) as a hero.
Apr 21, 2011
Editor’s note: The following column by my old friend Fred Smith is a friendly amendment to a column of mine that appeared in MinnPost on April 5. My piece centered on President Dwight Eisenhower’s famous Farewell Address warning, in 1961, about an emerging “military-industrial complex,” and argued that his admonition takes on a significantly different meaning when read in the context of what he said immediately before and immediately after. (In short, the former Five-Star General said we really needed the weaponry as the Soviet Union really was a threat.) Fred got in touch right afterwards and correctly noted that there was another critically important warning in Ike’s speech, albeit one which has received far less attention over the last half-century. I asked him to write about it, which he has done here with great insight.
