In a grand Washington tradition, I periodically make imperious demands. In the past year or two, I’ve issued the following ultimatums to the GOP. o No tax increases, since more money for Washington will encourage a bigger burden of government and undermine prosperity….
Daily Analysis
Should Politicians Go on Trial for Economic Negligence?
I like to think I despise politicians more than 99.9 percent of the population. Even in my kindest moments, I see them as occasionally well-intentioned souls who are easily corrupted. Most of the time, they are a plague on society, as this cartoon illustrates. So you…
How to Reconcile Liberty, Morality, Conservatism, and Libertarianism with Carney’s Fusionist Theorem
As a libertarian who became interested in public policy because of Ronald Reagan, it won’t surprise you to know that I’m more of a “right libertarian” than “left libertarian.” I fully agree with positions that motivate left libertarians, such as the war on drugs doing…
A Fiscal Policy Tutorial: Everything You Need to Know about the Economics of Government Spending
Almost exactly one year ago, I did a post entitled “A Laffer Curve Tutorial” because I wanted readers to have all the arguments and data in one place (and also because it meant I wouldn’t have to track down all the videos when someone asked me for the full set)….
In the Entire World, Is there Anybody Who Is Surprised that Obamacare Is Turning Out to Be Far More Expensive than the President Promised?
Washington is filled with people who exaggerate, prevaricate, dissemble, and obfuscate. And those are the people I like. The ones I don’t like are much worse. That’s why, during the Obamacare debate, I warned that the numbers were utterly dishonest. We were told, if…
Senator Ron Johnson Exposes Obama’s “Frugal Budget”
I mentioned yesterday that Senator Johnson of Wisconsin did a good job at the Senate Budget Committee’s hearing on tax reform. Today, I want to elaborate on two of his points. First, he asked all three of the witnesses what the maximum marginal tax rate on any…
The Gold Standard Is a Good System, but Governments Can’t Be Trusted to Operate It Honestly
I’ve linked before to Professor George Selgin’s masterful video on the Federal Reserve’s horrible track record, and I’ve done my own video on the origin of central banking. These types of posts often generate questions about what reforms we should support, and a lot…
IRS Commissioner Bumps into Reality, Learns Nothing and Wants to Make the Tax System Worse
This interview with the IRS Commissioner is really irritating. He wants us to believe that all the problems exist because of bad laws enacted by Congress. I certainly agree that the crowd in Washington is venal, corrupt, and duplicitous. But the IRS takes a bad…
To Boost Obama’s Redistribution Agenda, OECD Pushes Crazy Assertion that Poverty Is Higher in the U.S. than in Greece, Hungary, Portugal, and Turkey
Supporters of individual liberty and national sovereignty have been skeptical of the United Nations, and with good reason. With the support of statists such as George Soros, the U.N. pushes for crazy ideas such as global taxation and global currency. But there’s…
If Even the International Monetary Fund Acknowledges the Laffer Curve, Why Doesn’t Obama Realize that Higher Tax Rates are All Pain and No Gain?
I speculated last year that the political elite finally might be realizing that higher tax rates are not the solution to Greece’s fiscal situation. Simply stated, you can only squeeze so much blood out of a stone, and pushing tax rates higher cripples growth and…