In the battle against higher taxes and wasteful spending, I’ve never thought that witches would be an ally, but Romanian politicians apparently voted down a proposed tax because they were afraid of being cursed. We curse politicians in America all the time, of course, but in a different way. And since that milder approach doesn’t […]

I sympathize with almost all taxpayers, but it’s difficult to feel sorry for government workers who get in trouble with the IRS. Compensation packages for federal bureaucrats are twice as lucrative as those for workers in the productive sector of the economy and their pensions are similarly extravagant. Yet they often can’t be bothered to […]

Here’s a story for the better-late-than-never file. Former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro confessed that communism doesn’t work and that his nation’s economic system should not be emulated. Fidel Castro told a visiting American journalist that Cuba’s communist economic model doesn’t work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear […]

I sometimes joke that the French are the world’s most statist people. I have no idea if that is actually true, but the latest protests in France certainly are a good piece of evidence. French workers (especially government bureaucrats) are protesting a plan to increase the retirement age from 60 to 62. They apparently think […]

Here’s a clever video produced by the Winston Group, comparing the tax policies of two Democratic Presidents. Having previously highlighted Kennedy’s tax-cutting approach, it is painful for me to observe the class warfare approach of the Obama Administration. What’s especially fascinating is that JFK intuitively understood the Laffer Curve, particularly the insight that deficits usually […]

When all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. That old saying makes a lot of sense. As a tax economist, I’m sometimes guilty of looking at all sorts of issues based on their relationship with the tax code. In my defense, however, the tentacles of the IRS now reach […]

A man in New York recently scared off some gang members by firing a couple of warning shots into the ground. When the cops arrived, did they congratulate the man for protecting his family and start looking for the thugs? That’s what would happen in a logical and just society, but the anti-gun mentality in […]

This New York Post chart shows that the already-bloated federal workforce has expanded since the downturn began. And since compensation for federal bureaucrats is twice the average for other workers, it certainly seems like Obama is playing a perverse game of class warfare – particularly since ordinary Americans pay the price when so-called stimulus spending […]

I’m working on a serious blog post about European fiscal developments, but my research on that issue has alerted me to a couple of stories about President Jose Manuel Barroso that cry out for immediate mockery and abuse. Mr. Barroso, for those that don’t follow the exciting world of international bureaucracy, is the President of […]