People pay every single penny of tax that politicians impose on corporations. The investors that own companies obviously pay (more than one time!) when governments tax profits. The workers employed by companies obviously pay, both directly and indirectly, because of corporate income tax. And consumers also bear a burden thanks to business taxes that lead to […]
read more...We know the welfare state is good news for people inside government. Lots of bureaucrats are required, after all, to oversee a plethora of redistribution programs. Walter Williams refers to these paper pushers as poverty pimps, and there’s even a ranking showing which states have the greatest number of these folks who profit by creating dependency. But […]
read more...I’m a big advocate of the Laffer Curve. Simply stated, it’s absurdly inaccurate to think that taxpayers and the economy are insensitive to changes in tax policy. Yet bureaucracies such as the Joint Committee on Taxation basically assume that the economy will be unaffected and that tax revenues will jump dramatically if tax rates are boosted by, say, […]
read more...If you ask me about the most wasteful department in the federal government, I’ll state that there are lots of good choices, but if forced to identify the best candidate for elimination, I’ll go with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. If you ask me about the entitlement program most in need of reform, I’m […]
read more...Federal policies unquestionably deserve some blame for skyrocketing tuition costs. Washington subsidizes student borrowing, and colleges in turn raise prices to capture federal dollars. Higher prices put pressure on Washington to increase subsidies and the cycle repeats. But there are obviously other forces at work as well. In a typical market you would expect competition to […]
read more...People sometimes think I’m strange for being so focused on the economic harm that results from third-party payer. But bear with me and we’ll see why it’s a very important issue. If you’re not already familiar with the term, third-party payer exists when someone other than the consumer is paying for something. And it’s a […]
read more...It’s difficult to promote good economic policy when some policy makers have a deeply flawed grasp of history. This is why I’ve tried to educate people, for instance, that government intervention bears the blame for the 2008 financial crisis, not capitalism or deregulation. Going back in time, I’ve also explained the truth about “sweatshops” and “robber barons.” […]
read more...This Thursday, Scottish voters decide whether they want to break away from the United Kingdom and reclaim their independence. Do advocates of economic liberty in America have a dog in this fight? Well, there’s very solid academic evidence from economic historians that Europe originally became rich precisely because power was decentralized among lots of small jurisdictions that […]
read more...I’ve complained over and over again that America’s tax code is a nightmare that undermines competitiveness and retards growth. Our aggregate fiscal burden may not be as high as it is for many of our foreign competitors, but high tax rates and poor design mean the system is very punitive on a per-dollar-raised basis. For more information, the Tax Foundation […]
read more...America’s health care system is a mess, and we can assign almost all the blame on government. Simply stated, we don’t have functioning and efficient markets because Medicaid, Medicare, tax-code distortions, and other forms of regulation and intervention have created a system that is crippled by a third-party payer crisis. There’s no logical reason to expect consumers to […]
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