As regular readers know, one of my great challenges in life is trying to educate policy makers about the Laffer Curve, which is simply a way of illustrating that government won’t collect any revenue if tax rates are zero, but also won’t collect much revenue if tax…
Daily Analysis
Another Great Moment in the Annals of Absurd Government Law Enforcement
Government officials do some really crazy things in the name of law enforcement. I recently wrote about an armed raid on an animal shelter in order to execute a baby deer. That was paramilitary overkill (pun intended), though it probably didn’t waste as many tax…
Why Did the Libertarian Chicken Cross the Road?
The good thing about being a libertarian is that you are motivated by freedom, which is a very noble principle, and you have lots of evidence on your side, whether the issue is economics or personal liberty. You can’t afford to be smug, of course, since it’s still a…
The Arbitrary Diktats of Generalissimo Obama
There’s an old joke that the definition of quandary is when your mother-in-law drives off a cliff in your new car. But since I’m not married, I can’t use that joke. Besides, I’m a policy wonk, so the type of quandary that catches my attention is when the Obama…
Europe’s Soft Bigotry of Low Economic Expectations
The United States is suffering through the weakest economic expansion since the Great Depression, which is a damning indictment of Obamanomics. But that doesn’t mean the United States has the world’s worst-performing economy. Japan’s statist economy has been mired in…
Taxes Even Impact When We’re Born and When We Die
As a fiscal policy economist, one of my responsibilities is to educate policy makers about the impact of taxation. Simply stated, I try to help them understand that taxes alter behavior. If you tax something at a higher rate, you get less of whatever is being taxed….
More Compelling Evidence that America’s Corporate Tax System Is Pointlessly Destructive
It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that the United States has the world’s worst corporate tax system. We definitely have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, and we may have the highest corporate tax rate in the entire world depending on how…
Very Good News: The Tea Party Has Altered the Spending Trajectory in Washington
Why does the Tea Party attract such vitriolic opposition, whether from Obama’s IRS or big-government Republicans like Karl Rove? The answer is simple. People in Washington don’t like the Tea Party because this citizen uprising is making it difficult to engage in…
More Americans Going Galt
President Obama promised he would unite the world…and he’s right. Representatives from dozens of nations have bitterly complained about an awful piece of legislation, called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), that was enacted back in 2010. They despise…
More Double Taxation of Dividends and Capital Gains Would Turn Tax Reform into Tax Deform
Even though I’m a big fan of tax reform, I explained back in June that I’m not very comfortable with the “blank slate” tax reform plan put forth by Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT). My main gripe is that they start with the assumption that there…