Tag Archives: incentives
How the Welfare State Erodes Social Capital, as Illustrated by a Chuck Asay Cartoon
I’m a big fan of Chuck Asay’s political cartoons. My favorite is his nothing-left-to-steal masterpiece. And his tractor cartoon and his regime-uncertainty cartoon are brilliant indictments of Obamanomics. Here’s another classic…. Read more
How the Welfare State Traps the Poor in Dependency, the British Version
Back in 2011, I linked to a simple chart that illustrated how handouts and subsidies create very high implicit marginal tax rates for low-income people and explained how “generosity” from… Read more
Why Won’t Washington Understand that Paying People to Be Unemployed Means More Unemployment?
I’ve written periodically about the perverse incentives of the unemployment insurance system. Simply stated, there will be fewer jobs if the government subsidizes joblessness, and I even showed that this… Read more
Sex and the Power of Economics
Even though there is a wealth of evidence for the Laffer Curve, statists and other big-government advocates routinely claim that incentives don’t matter. So I wonder how they’ll react to… Read more
Alan Blinder’s Accidental Case for the Flat Tax
Alan Blinder has a distinguished resume. He’s a professor at Princeton and he served as Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve. So I was interested to see he authored an… Read more
A Lesson on the Laffer Curve for Barack Obama
One of my frustrating missions in life is to educate policy makers on the Laffer Curve. This means teaching folks on the left that tax policy affects incentives to earn… Read more
If We Redistribute Income, Why Not Do the Same for Grades?
I posted a joke about this last year, but this video makes the point much more effectively. When you tax and redistribute income or grades, you penalize those who achieve… Read more
The IRS: Even Worse Than You Think
Since it is tax-filing season and we all want to honor our wonderful tax system, let’s go into the archives and show this video from last year about the onerous… Read more
A Laffer Curve Tutorial
Greetings from frigid Minnesota. I’m in this misplaced part of the North Pole to testify before both the Senate and House Tax Committees today on issues related to the Laffer… Read more
The Super Bowl of Taxation
The Wall Street Journal uses the clash between the Steelers and Packers as an opportunity to make a much-need point about taxes. Because of Pennsylvania’s flat tax, Ben Roethlisberger keeps… Read more
