Tax competition, as I have explained to the point of being a nuisance, is an important restraint on the greed of the political class. Simply stated, politicians are less like to over-tax and over-spend if they know that geese with the golden eggs can fly across the…
Daily Analysis
The Toulouse Child Killer: Another Case of Welfare Being Used to Subsidize Terrorism?
I’m not a big fan of welfare programs, in part because I sympathize with taxpayers (check out these outrageous examples of waste) but mostly because redistribution programs subsidize poverty and trap people in lives of despair. But as I wrote in 2010, the most…
Romney’s Big Gaffe Is TARP, not Etch-a-Sketch
Governor Romney’s campaign is catching some flak because a top aide implied that many of the candidate’s positions have been insincere and that Romney will erase those views (like an Etch-a-Sketch) and return to his statist roots as the general election begins. I’m…
Modern Day Stamp Taxes
Today marks the 247th anniversary since the British government passed the Stamp Act, a direct tax levied on all materials printed for commercial or legal use in the colonies. The tax faced a backlash from the colonies and was decried as taxation without…
Congressman Ryan’s Budget Restrains Spending Growth, Allows Private Sector to Expand Faster than Burden of Government
The Chairman of the House Budget Committee has produced a new budget plan which contrasts very favorably with the tax-heavy, big-spending proposal submitted by the President last month. Perhaps most important, Congressman Ryan’s plan restrains spending growth,…
The Small Business Administration Should Be Abolished
Being pro-market is not the same as being pro-business. A free market means that nobody is using the coercive power of government to obtain unearned goodies, and that is true for big business as well as big labor, or any particular segment of the population. Indeed,…
A Test for the GOP: Shutting Down the Spigot of Corporate Welfare at the Export-Import Bank
Republicans are telling voters that they’ve learned the hard lessons from the 2006 and 2008 elections and that they are back on the side of taxpayers. I’m not convinced, which is why I’ve outlined some key tests that will demonstrate whether the GOP genuinely supports…
Global Taxes Pose Constant Risk to Fiscal Sovereignty
The OECD, although a frequent villain, is not the only threat to fiscal sovereignty. Organizations such as the UN have long sought to tax carbon, financial transactions, and even emigration. But the latest in a long list of attempts to institute international taxes…
An Indictment of Barack Obama’s Economic Record
In a recent post comparing Reaganomics and Obamanomics, I explained why I think Barack Obama’s policies have been hurting the economy. In today’s New York Post, I do a full-scale indictment. Here are my bullet points. * The unemployment rate is still above 8 percent,…
How Many Bureaucrats Does It Take to Screw in a Light Bulb?
I posted the other day about the federal government giving $10 million of our tax dollars to a private company for developing an “affordable” light bulb that costs $50. Now, thanks to the pen of Alexander Hoffman (creator of this gem), we have an excellent cartoon to…