Washington is in the middle of another debate about redistributing money. But that’s hardly newsworthy. Politics, after all, is basically a never-ending racket in which insiders buy votes and accumulate power with other people’s money. The current debate about…
Daily Analysis
Boost Worker Pay – and Make the United States More Competitive – by Gutting the Corporate Income Tax
The business pages are reporting that Chrysler will be fully owned by Fiat after that Italian company buys up remaining shares. I don’t know what this means about the long-term viability of Chrysler, but we can say with great confidence that the company will be better…
A Manifesto for Free Markets in Health Care
Not counting humor-oriented pieces such as this and this, it’s been nearly a month since I’ve written about Obamacare. To make up for this oversight, today we’re going to look at a way out of the Obamacare mess. But the goal isn’t simply to repeal the President’s bad…
A Golden Rule Christmas
Jay Leno had the all-time best Christmas joke and the school bureaucrats in Haymarket, VA, win the prize for the all-time worst example of anti-Christmas lunacy. But I must win the prize for being the biggest Christmas policy dork. I make this confession freely…
The Most Pro-Capitalism Place to Live in North America Is…
Back in February, I said Australia probably was the country most likely to survive and prosper as much of the world suffered fiscal collapse and social chaos. In hindsight, I probably should have mentioned Canada as an option, in part because of pro-growth reforms in…
Ryan-Murray Budget Deal Replaces Real Spending Restraint of Sequester with Budget Gimmicks and Back-Door Tax Hikes
How Disappointing, but how predictable. Politicians approved legislation in 2011 that was supposed to impose a modest bit of spending restraint over the next 10 years. It wasn’t much. The enforcement mechanism, known as sequestration, merely was supposed to guarantee…
Massive Double Taxation Is a Self-Inflicted Tax Injury that Undermines American Competitiveness and Job Creation
Back in the 1960s, Clint Eastwood starred in a movie entitled The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I was thinking that might be a good title for today’s post about some new research by Michelle Harding, a tax economist for the OECD. But then I realized that her study on…
Progress on the Laffer Curve*
The title of this piece has an asterisk because, unfortunately, we’re not talking about progress on the Laffer Curve in the United States. Even Keynes himself accepted this. Like many other economists throughout the ages, he understood and agreed with the principles…
Paul Krugman Is (Sort of) Right about a Plot against France
Every so often, when the temptation is too great, I’ll comment on something written by Paul Krugman. When he botched his analysis of Estonia, for instance, I joined that nation’s President in correcting some egregious errors. And I periodically remind people that…
Obama Administration Urges More Unemployment
President Obama has presided over a terrible jobs market. Unemployment is more than two-percentage points higher today than the White House claimed it would be if the so-called stimulus was enacted. Even more worrisome, the employment-population ratio seems to have…