The Obama campaign’s “Life of Julia” ad is a disturbing sign. It suggests that political strategists, pollsters, and campaign advisers must think that the people living off government are getting to the point where they can out-vote the people paying for government….
Daily Analysis
So-Called Paycheck Fairness Act Would Allow Government to Second-Guess Private Markets
Back in 2010, I cited the superb work of Christina Hoff Summers as she explained that we should let markets determine wages rather than giving that power to a bunch of bean-counting bureaucrats. She wrote that article because leftists at the time were pushing a…
Anti-Obesity Efforts Mean More Bloated Government, not Better Health
Back in 2009, I wrote about various schemes to impose taxes on unhealthy food. At the time, I was primarily concerned about the risks of giving politicians a new source of revenue that would be used to increase the burden of government spending. The folks at Reason TV…
Great Moments in Foreign Government: Taxpayer-Financed Friends for Mass Murderers
While most of my disdain is focused on the clowns in Washington, I enjoy poking fun at the policies adopted by the various nitwits and thugs that can be found in other governments. That’s why I’ve mocked the British government-run healthcare system for letting a woman…
Estonia and Austerity: Another Exploding Cigar for Paul Krugman
I have great fondness for Estonia, in part because it was the first post-communist nation to adopt the flat tax, but also because of the country’s remarkable scenery. Most recently, though, I’ve been bragging about Estonia (along with Latvia and Lithuania, the other…
House Defeats Motion Supporting Levin’s Latest Misguided Attack on Tax Havens
While the two chambers of Congress work to reconcile the differences between their respective transportation bills, CF&P continues to monitor an unrelated tax provision known as the “Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act” that was slipped into the Senate version by…
Will More Federal Debt Improve the U.S. Government’s Creditworthiness?
Writing in yesterday’s Washington Post, former Obama economist Larry Summers put forth the strange hypothesis that more red ink would improve the federal government’s long-run fiscal position. This sounds like an excuse for more Keynesian spending as part of another…
Global Taxes Threaten More Than Just the Economy
Writing in today’s Washington Times, Richard Rahn addressed the issue of global taxation. As recently described in a CF&P Libertas, the ongoing efforts of international bureaucrats to impose global taxes threatens not just economic prosperity, but also the…
The Great Tax Haven Debate, Part II
Back in April, responding to an article written by Ann Hollingshead for the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development, I wrote a long post defending so-called tax havens. I went through the trouble of a point-by-point response because her article was…
Contract for Buffalo Teachers Shows the Wrong Way of Cutting Excess Bureaucratic Blubber
Government bureaucrats are significantly overpaid compared to folks in the productive sector of the economy. So you would think I’d support cuts, especially the kind that get rid of excess blubber in the government workforce. But not when it means higher costs for…

