What’s the defining characteristic of our political masters? Going all the way back to when they ran for student council in 6th grade, is it a craven desire to say or do anything to get elected? Is it the corrupt compulsion to trade earmarks, loopholes, and favors in exchange for campaign cash? Or is it […]
read more...I feel a bit like Goldilocks. No, this is not a confession about cross-dressing or being transsexual. I’m the boring kind of libertarian. Instead, I have a run-of-the-mill analogy. Think about when you were a kid and your parents told you the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. You may remember that she entered […]
read more...We’ve reached the stage where Obamacare is the punchline to a bad joke. The law has been a disaster, both for the economy and for the Democratic Party. Not that we should be surprised. You don’t get better healthcare with a poisonous recipe of higher taxes, added government spending, and more intervention. With any luck, Obamacare will be a textbook […]
read more...The Bible says that “the wages of sin is death,” but the same can’t be said of Washington, DC. The bureaucrats, lobbyists, politicians, contractors, insiders, cronyists, and influence peddlers have rigged the system so that they get rich by diverting money from people in the productive sector of the economy. How bad is the disconnect between Washington and […]
read more...Over the years, I’ve shared many charts, graphs, and tables to help people understand that the welfare state is fundamentally unsustainable. And, assuming there’s not genuine entitlement reform, many of these fiscal estimates show that the United States has a very perilous future. According to the Bank for International Settlements, the United States is in worse shape […]
read more...I asked back in September whether all the bad news about Obamacare meant it was time to feel sorry for President Obama and other statists. Some people apparently didn’t realize I was being sarcastic, so I got some negative feedback. I’ve since learned to be more careful with my language, and subsequent columns about Obamacare developments have […]
read more...My main goal for fiscal policy is shrinking the size and scope of the federal government and lowering the burden of government spending. But I’m also motivated by a desire for better tax policy, which means lower tax rates, less double taxation, and fewer corrupting loopholes and other distortions. One of the big obstacles to good tax policy is that many statists […]
read more...It takes a special skill – or an abundance of chutzpah – to harm a person and then turn around and argue that it was all for their own good. But that’s exactly what the Obama administration, and the sycophants at the New York Times, are doing in light of new projections from the Congressional […]
read more...A just-released report from the bean counters at the Congressional Budget Office is getting lots of attention because the bureaucrats are now admitting that Obamacare will impose much more damage to the economy than they previously predicted. Of course, many people knew from the start that Obamacare would be a disasterand that it would make the healthcare system […]
read more...Looking at labor markets, my biggest concern is the drop in labor force participation. The data from the Labor Department on the employment-population ratio, for instance, suggest a permanent reduction in the share of the population that is working. And since economic output and living standards ultimately depend on the quality and quantity of labor and capital […]
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