Part of my job is to educate people about free markets and fiscal policy. In some cases, that means providing information and analysis to those already sympathetic to limited government. There are many people who like the idea of lower tax burdens, for instance, but they may not have given much thought to the interaction […]
read more...I talked a couple of days ago to Neil Cavuto about whether the Obama Administration is slightly modifying its class-warfare tax policy. As you can see, I’m not overly fixated on the parsing of Biden’s comments since I’m against higher tax rates for anyone. And my takeaway message from the segment is that we need […]
read more...I’ve explained on many occasions that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was bad news for the economy. And the same can be said of Herbert Hoover’s policies, since he also expanded the burden of federal spending, raised tax rates, and increased government intervention. So when I was specifically asked to take part in a symposium on […]
read more...This election season has seen lots of talk (and demagoguery) about whether investors, entrepreneurs, and small business owners should be hit with class-warfare tax policy. And there’s also been lots of debate about the best way of averting bankruptcy for Medicare, which is the federal government’s health care program for the elderly. But there’s been […]
read more...President Obama supports higher taxes, but he usually claims he only wants higher tax rates on evil rich people as part of his class-warfare agenda. Heck, he promised back in 2008 that, “no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not […]
read more...I periodically mock the crazy statists of California. The state is almost surely doomed to suffer a Greek-style fiscal chaos. The only unknown is whether Illinois will beat the Golden State into default. The politicians in Sacramento impose very high taxes to fund a bloated bureaucracy that oversees a bunch of politically correct nonsense. But […]
read more...One of my favorite Cato Institute publications is the Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors, which is produced by my colleague Chris Edwards. The report card uses variables such as the burden of government spending and the degree of class warfare tax policy to determine which states are moving in the right direction and […]
read more...Regular readers know that Washington is a very sleazy city. Just as rats and cockroaches are attracted to a dumpster, con artists and fraudsters are attracted to big government. A bloated budget means many opportunities to get unearned wealth by being politically well connected. A loophole-ridden, 72,000-page tax code creates a sandbox for lobbyists. And […]
read more...Some people are grumbling that the First Lady has taken the joy out of school lunches. She’s identified with the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010,” which uses federal funding to coerce schools into providing meals with fewer calories. But I think this criticism misses the point. The problem is not overweight kids, as one […]
read more...When I first saw this polling data, I thought we had some great news. After all, it shows that Americans – by a margin of more than 4-to-1 – want to reduce the burden of government spending. This comports with data from previous polls, including the recent survey showing nearly three-fourths of Americans don’t think […]
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