Senator Carl Levin is revitalizing his crusade against so-called tax havens. In a press release yesterday, he announced the reintroduction of his Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, while touting the support of labor lobby groups and advocates of big government. As the Center for Freedom and Prosperity noted in a press release yesterday, the legislation […]
read more...We fight to preserve tax competition among nations, but the principle’s effects exist within the US among the states, as well. George Scoville writes about the likely outcomes of a decision by Vermont to raise their cigarette taxes by $0.38 while New Hampshire lowers theirs by $0.10: Prices are information wrapped in incentives, and taxes […]
read more...How was anything ever invented before government started “investing” in new technologies? One wonders these things, given the seriousness with which Keynesians seem to believe that if they don’t choose the economic winners and then throw large sums of money at them – other people’s money, of course – then there will be no innovation […]
read more...We spend a lot of time pointing out the asinine and corrupt federal policies which come out of Washington, DC. But there’s another government in DC, and it’s also filled with petty tyrants who make bad policy in order to benefit special interests. That the local DC government is corrupt has never been a secret, […]
read more...Richard Rahn writes in the Washington Times today on a pair of regulations which he describes as “national economic suicide.” At issue is the IRS’s proposed regulation that would require U.S. banks to report information on foreign account holders, even though they are not taxed in the U.S., as well as the Foreign Account Tax […]
read more...We often look at how tax competition affects nations, but the same concept applies to U.S. states as well. Two recent reports demonstrate what happens when politicians fail to understand just how tax competition works. In a report from the Maine Heritage Policy Center, we see how New Hampshire’s low retail tax rate is attracting […]
read more...I mentioned the other day a claim from CEI that regulatory burdens cost the economy nearly $2 trillion in 2008. The Phoenix Center also recently produced a policy bulletin examining the costs of the regulatory state (Hat-tip: Big Government). In quantifying the relationship between government spending and economic growth based upon 50 years of data, […]
read more...There are thousands of examples of the burdens placed on the economy and ordinary citizens, who see costs soar in response to excessive government regulations. A recent report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute called Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State, cites a study which concludes that the 81,405 pages of […]
read more...President Obama unveiled his fiscal year 2012 budget today, and there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that there’s no major initiative such as the so-called stimulus scheme or the government-run healthcare proposal. The bad news, though, is that government is far too big and Obama’s budget does nothing to address this […]
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