I don’t blame the Democrats for wanting to seduce Republicans into a tax-increase trap. Indeed, I completely understand why some Democrats said their top political goal was getting the GOP to surrender the no-tax-hike position. I’m mystified, though, why some Republicans are willing to walk into such a trap. If you were playing chess against […]
read more...In a recent column for the Wall Street Journal, I explained why Mitt Romney’s interest in a value-added tax is deeply troubling. One of my key points was that the VAT is a money machine for big government. But don’t believe me. Look at Japan, where the politicians see increases in the VAT as a […]
read more...After saddling the nation with trillion-dollar boondoggles like the faux stimulus and Obamacare, I’m not sure it’s possible for Obama to reinvent himself as a budget cutter before the election. But I welcome converts, even ones that are insincere, so I’m happy he’s at least pretending to want to deal with waste and duplication in […]
read more...I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when I write about insanely stupid government policies. But I know I get more motivated to fight big government. How can anyone want to give more money and power to politicians, for instance, after reading these comparisons of dumb government policy in the United States and United […]
read more...I’m a big believer in fairness. And since I’ve written about the shortcomings of Newt Gingrich, Mitch Daniels, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann, and Mitt Romney, I need to say something about Rick Santorum. Actually, I don’t need to say anything, because other people have done that job already. Here’s an excerpt of what […]
read more...Austan Goolsbee, the former Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, has a column in the Wall Street Journal that argues government spending isn’t too high. That’s obviously a silly assertion, as I explain here, here, and here, but I want to focus on what he wrote about tax revenues. Here’s the relevant passage […]
read more...When I read the story from England about needing photo ID to buy teaspoons, I thought British bureaucrats built an insurmountable lead in the U.S. vs. U.K. contest for stupidest government action. But I should have had more faith in the hare-brained politicians of Illinois. When they’re not busy driving businesses from the state with […]
read more...The education people at Cato do remarkable work. They put together one of the best charts I’ve ever seen, and they are leading the fight for school choice and against any federal government role in education. This new video, showing the failure of Bush’s main education initiative, is one example of their great work. The […]
read more...As I explained in this set of videos, we desperately need to reform entitlement programs. But not in the wrong way, with price fixing and means testing. Good reform means personal retirement accounts for Social Security. It means vouchers for Medicare. And it means block-granting Medicaid back to the states. And if you want to understand why reform […]
read more...My Iowa caucus predictions from yesterday were hopelessly wrong, probably because I was picking with my heart rather than my head. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney’s openness to a value-added tax makes him a dangerously flawed candidate, and I hoped Iowa voters shared my concern. In a column for today’s […]
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