A great column in the Wall Street Journal explains how FDR’s policies hurt the economy. That is true, but the really interesting part of the column for me is that it explains how Roosevelt (and then Truman) were convinced the economy would return to depression…
Daily Analysis
Taxing the Rich Won't Raise Revenue – but Will Hurt the Economy.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, my Cato Institute colleague Alan Reynolds offers a simple economics lesson about pitfalls of class-warfare tax policy: …the evidence is clear that when marginal tax rates go up, the amount of reported incomes goes down….
Excellent Video Channeling Bastiat
Tom Palmer of the Altas Network has a very concise – yet quite devastating – video exposing the Keynesian fallacy that the destruction of wealth by calamaties such as earthquakes or terrorism is good for economic growth. Tom cites the work of Bastiat, who…
America’s Tax Haven Policies Attract $Trillions of Job-Creating Investment.
I think it is very nice when left-wing groups publish reports that make the case for pro-market policies A recent example is a report from the Center for International Policy, which wants to demonize so-called tax havens, but their report shows that the United States…
Keynesian Economics and the Wizard of Oz.
When Dorothy and her friends finally reach Oz, they present themselves to the almighty Wizard, only to eventually discover that he is just an illusion maintained by a charlatan hiding behind a curtain. This seems eerily akin to the state of Keynesian economics. It…
Thomas Sowell: Obama's Policies Are a Sedative, not a Stimulus.
As usual, Sowell is right on the mark. By expanding the size and burden of government, Obama is making it more difficult for the economy to prosper: President Obama keeps telling us that he is “creating jobs.” But more and more Americans have no jobs. The…
The Obama Administration's Dangerous Re-Definition of Poverty.
A former colleague from my days at the Heritage Foundation, Robert Rector, has a very disturbing article at National Review Online. Robert explains that the Obama Administration is putting together a new – and rigged – definition of poverty that has…
Lessons from the Greek Budget Debacle.
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…
Mark Steyn on Greece.
Pulling no punches, Mark Steyn ponders the entitlement-driven collapse of Greece and asks why politicians in America are repeating the same mistakes: Chapter One (the introduction of unsustainable entitlements) leads eventually to Chapter Twenty (total societal…
The Fox Butterfield Effect and the Laffer Curve.
A former reporter for the New York Times, Fox Butterfield, became a bit of a laughingstock in the 1990s for publishing a series of articles addressing the supposed quandary of how crime rates could be falling during periods when prison populations were expanding. A…