A solid analysis by a reporter finds that bureaucrats make almost $8,000 more than their private sector counterparts, but the bigger scandal is the giant gap in fringe benefits. Taxpayers cough up nearly $41,000 for every bureaucrat, but workers in the productive sector of the economy get an average of less than $10,000: Federal employees […]

 As usual, Tom Sowell uses basic economics to explain a confusing topic. His core insight is that government has undermined market forces, which is leading to rising costs. Obama and the other statists somehow think more government will make things better: …policies based on political hype over the years are what have gotten us into […]

The geniuses in Washington have come up with a great idea to attract more tourists to the United States. Yes, you guessed correctly. The politicians are going to impose a tax! Normal readers are probably scratching their heads about the logic of attracting visitors by making them pay more, but it all makes sense when […]

Only the government could fire someone for “serious abuses” and yet allow that person to collect an extra $550,000 of taxpayer money for “unused vacation” – even though he had six times as many carryover days as the rules allow. This is a nauseating example of why California is facing a fiscal crisis:  Amid a […]

 After looking at the “humor” section of the archives and finding this post, a reader emailed to reminisce about a very funny Dave Barry column from the 1990s that made fun of bureaucratic stupidity. After a bit of digging, I found a link. Here’s my favorite part of the column, but I encourge you to […]

President Obama is proposing a series of major tax increases. His budget envisions higher tax rates on personal income, increased double taxation of dividends and capital gains, and a big increase in the death tax. And his health care plan includes significant tax hikes, including perhaps the imposition of the Medicare payroll tax on capital […]

In addition to being in favor of more spending, increased regulation, bailouts, and protectionism, President Bush also saddled the economy with a big minimum wage increase. A new study shows that this pernicious policy has destroyed more than 500,000 part-time jobs. One of the most interesting insights in the report is that the economy (prior […]

  Fiscal crises have a predictable pattern. Step 1 occurs when the economy is prospering and tax revenues are growing faster than forecast. Step 2 is when politicians use the additional money to increase government spending. Step 3 is that politicians do not treat the extra tax revenue like a temportary windfall and budget accordingly. Instead, they adopt […]

President Obama and many other politicians in Washington are big fans of pay-as-you-go budgeting, which means they want any new spending or tax relief offset (or “paid for”) with tax increases or spending cuts from other parts of the budget. Or at least that’s what they claim. But when Senator Bunning took them at their […]