Today, October 1, is the first day of the 2012 fiscal year. And if you’re wondering why America’s economy seems to have a hangover (this cartoon is a perfect illustration), it’s because politicians had a huge party with our money in FY2011. We don’t have final numbers…
Daily Analysis
Obama Administration Bribing States to Create More Food-Stamp Dependency
Only the federal government could be this stupid. We have two very big problems in our nation. o First, we have a giant, bloated federal government that is spending too much money, putting us at serious risk of a Greek-style fiscal crisis at some point in the future….
Debunking Elizabeth Warren’s Class Warfare
Running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, Harvard professor and former Obama appointee Elizabeth Warren got her fellow leftists excited when she said, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody” and added that “…part of the underlying social…
A Powerful Moral Argument to Get Government Out of the Housing Business
I’ve previously explained that the federal government should have no role in housing and that the Department of Housing and Urban Development should be abolished. If I haven’t convinced you, then you should watch this powerful video from the folks at Reason TV. What…
Tim Geithner: The Forrest Gump of World Finance
One almost feels sorry for Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. He’s a punchline in his own country because he oversees the IRS even though he conveniently forgot to declare $80,000 of income (and managed to get away with punishment that wouldn’t even qualify as a slap on…
Growing Opposition to Obama’s IRS Proposal to Make Banks Put Foreign Tax Law above U.S. Tax Law
Why impose a regulatory burden on a weakened banking sector when it has nothing to do with enforcing American tax law?
A Real-Life Welfare Queen
During his 1976 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, Ronald Reagan popularized the notion of “welfare queens” who bilked redistribution programs for thousands of dollars. It has since become non-PC to use such a term, but that’s never stopped me. Here’s a…
Coca-Cola CEO Says China Now More “Business Friendly” than the United States
Having grown up during the Cold War, I never though I would write a sentence like the title of this blog post, but there have been lots of firsts during the reign of Obama. When the head of a major multinational company says the American tax system is worse than the…
The Solyndra Scandal Reeks, but the Entire Green-Energy Program Is a Scam
I’ve commented on the corruption of the Solyndra scandal, but it’s important to understand this is not just a story of sleaze. From an economic perspective, the real problem is that green-energy programs cause a misallocation of capital. Simply stated, government…
Explaining the Perverse Impact of Double Taxation with a Chart
Whether I’m criticizing Warren Buffett’s innumeracy or explaining how to identify illegitimate loopholes, I frequently write about the perverse impact of double taxation. By this, I mean the tendency of politicians to impose multiple layers of taxation on income that…