The internal revenue codes is so mind-numbingly complex that even the head of the IRS uses a professional tax preparer. But that’s hardly a surprise. What is a bit shocking, though, is that Commissioner Shulman has the gall to claim that he favors tax code simplification when his IRS has been promulgating rules and regulations […]

The government is so incompetent that it never put the Christmas-day underwear-bomber on the no-fly list – even though the nutjob’s father reported his son’s radical views to American authorities. But the TSA for several years has targeted Mikey Hicks, a cub scout from New Jersey who is eight years old. Nobody got fired after […]

Do stores in low-income neighborhoods charge higher prices because of racism, or greed? That’s what some academics argue, but Tom Sowell points out that there are real economic factors that drive pricing decisions. The example below is about stores, but his IBD column also has a great example using financial services: Low-income neighborhoods tend to […]

This blog periodically makes fun of England (even though it is one of my favorite nations) for big government and political correctness, but these two stories caused my jaw to drop. First, the Daily Mail reports that a man was jailed for several hours because he was falsely suspected of writing an email that indirectly may have […]

  Academic research is fairly unanimous that high tax rates cause tax avoidance and tax evasion. Not many people, after all, are going to take big risks or engage in inefficient tax planning to escape Hong Kong’s low-rate flat tax. But people begin to figure out ways of keeping more of their money as tax […]

The Washington Times has an article exposing how a law firm is simultaneously doing legal work on a program for the government while also lobbying for more handouts from that program. Here’s an excerpt from the expose: One of the law firms hired to provide legal work for the Treasury Department on a multibillion-dollar federal […]

The Wall Street Journal opines about the good work of Democratic Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana. As the excerpt below notes, Schweitzer has vetoed wasteful spending and balanced the state budget without adding to the tax burden. Too bad there aren’t Democrats like him in Washington: Governor Brian Schweitzer this week ordered a 5% across the board […]

The late George Stigler, winner of the Nobel Prize in economics, is famous in part because of his work on “regulatory capture,” which occurs when interest groups use the coercive power of government to thwart competition and undeservedly line their own pockets. A perfect (and distasteful) example of this can be found in the Washington […]

Sometimes a picture really does tell a thousand words. Here’s a chart, based on data from the Philadelphia Fed, showing actual economic results compared to the predictions of professional economists. As you can see, my profession does a wretched job. Comparisons based on predictions from the IMF, OECD, CBO, and OMB doubtlessly would generate equally […]