The Cato Institute is an American libertarian policy institute headquartered in Washington, D.C.. It was founded in 1977 by Ed Crane, Murray Rothbard and Charles Koch, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of the Koch Industries. Cato was established to focus on public advocacy, media exposure and societal influence.
Cato advocates for a limited governmental role in domestic and foreign affairs and strong protection of civil liberties, including support for lowering or abolishing most taxes, opposition to the Federal Reserve System and the Affordable Care Act, the privatization of numerous government agencies and programs including Social Security and the United States Postal Service, demilitarization of the police, open borders and adhering to a non-interventionist foreign policy.
According to the 2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report, Cato is number 27 in the "Top Think Tanks Worldwide" and number 13 in the "Top Think Tanks in the United States"1.
History
The institute was founded in January 1977 in San Francisco, California2; named at the suggestion of cofounder Rothbard after Cato's Letters, a series of British essays penned in the early 18th century by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon.
In 1981, Murray Rothbard was removed from the Cato Institute by the board3. The board wanted to move Cato into public policy making, whereas Rothbard thought it should be devoted to scholarship4. That same year, Cato relocated to Washington, D.C., settling initially in a historic house on Capitol Hill. The institute moved to its current location on Massachusetts Avenue in 1993.
In 2020, Cato Institute was ranked the 27th-ranked think tank in the world in a study of think tanks by James G. McGann, at the University of Pennsylvania, based on "a rigorous, inclusive and objective process"1.
As of 2023, Cato Institute had annual revenues exceeding $57 million5.
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James G. McGann, 2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index Report (Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program, The Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania, 28 January 2021), 90-96, accessed 2 September 2024. ↩︎
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Cato Institute, "Cato: 40 Years of Advancing Liberty" (Cato.org, 2017), accessed 2 September 2024. ↩︎
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David Gordon, "The Kochtopus vs. Murray N. Rothbard" (LewRockwell.com, 22 April 2008), accessed 3 September 2024. ↩︎
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Gary North, "Think Tanks and Liberty" (Mises.org, 27 April 2012), accessed 3 September 2024. ↩︎
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"Cato Institute" (CharityNavigator.org), accessed 5 September 2024. ↩︎
This article is derived from the English Wikipedia article "Cato Institute" as of 28 Aug 2024, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.