Last month, Amity Shlaes came to Cato to discuss her superb new book about Calvin Coolidge. I heard her discuss the book back in January while participating in Hillsdale College’s conference on the 100th anniversary of the income tax, but the book is so rich with information that I was glad for the opportunity to […]
read more...Several European nations are suffering from a fiscal crisis. But that’s just part of the story. They also have significantly lower incomes than the United States, with living standards about 30 percent-40 percent below American levels. And while many people are upset about the 7.5 percent joblessness rate in the United States, we’re doing much […]
read more...I don’t like giving international bureaucrats tax-free salaries. And it really galls me when they use their privileged positions to promote statism. So you can understand why I’m not a big fan of the International Monetary Fund. Whether we’re talking more spending, more taxes, more bailouts, or more centralization and harmonization, it seems that the […]
read more...Senator Rand Paul is perhaps even better than I thought he would be. He already is playing a very substantive role on policy, ranging from his actions of big-picture issues, such as his proposed budget that would significantly shrink the burden of government spending, to his willingness to take on lower-profile but important issues such as […]
read more...The Senate is holding a Kangaroo Court designed to smear Apple for not voluntarily coughing up more tax revenue than the company actually owes. Here are four things you need to know. Apple is fully complying with the tax law. There is no suggestion that Apple has done anything illegal. The company is being berated […]
read more...I joked back in 2010 that Barack Obama had a very simple flat tax proposal. But as you can see, sometimes simple isn’t the same as good. Well, satire too often becomes reality in a world of greedy and corrupt politicians who think class-warfare is an acceptable guide to tax policy. I say this because […]
read more...I feel like I’m on the witness stand and I’m being badgered by a hostile lawyers. Readers keep asking me to identify the revenue-maximizing point on the Laffer Curve. But I don’t like that question. In the past, I’ve explained that the growth-maximizing point on the Laffer Curve is where enough revenue is raised to […]
read more...I was very pleased to report the other day that the people of France overwhelmingly favor spending cuts, even when they were asked a biased question that presupposed that Keynesian-style spending increases would “stimulate” the economy. Now I have some polling data about British voters, though I confess I’m not sure whether to be pleased […]
read more...I have to start this post with a big caveat. I’m not a fan of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The international bureaucracy is infamous for using American tax dollars to promote a statist economic agenda. Most recently, it launched a new scheme to raise the tax burden on multinational companies, which […]
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