Life is filled with risk. We can deal with that two ways. The first option is to allow people to make educated choices, thus promoting individual responsibility. The second option is to have politicians micro-manage our decisions, thus promoting passivity. Not…
Daily Analysis
The Other Corrupt DC Government
We spend a lot of time pointing out the asinine and corrupt federal policies which come out of Washington, DC. But there’s another government in DC, and it’s also filled with petty tyrants who make bad policy in order to benefit special interests. That the…
The IMF: An Equal-Opportunity Purveyor of Bad Advice
As a general rule, the bureaucrats at the International Monetary Fund are not awful people or fire-breathing leftists. But they are voices for the establishment. And, at the upper levels, IMF staff seem overly solicitous of the views of the big nations, which means…
Time to Shut Down the Department of Agriculture
I have a confession to make: I have a hard time making up my mind. At times, I am overcome by indecision. To be more specific, I can’t figure out which department of the federal government should be shut down first. In the past, I’ve written about the squalid waste…
A “Right” to Stolen Property? A Great Day for Human Rights!
I’m often amazed at how the political class concocts new rights that can only be fulfilled by trampling on genuine freedoms. In a previous post, I mocked Finland for deciding that broadband access was a human right (which presumably means Finns were being oppressed…
Arguing about Class-Warfare Taxation with Robert Reich
I was on Larry Kudlow’s CNBC show recently, where I debated against Robert Reich. I made (what I hope are) good points about the Laffer Curve and the big-government policies of both Bush and Obama. The bad news, as least from a personal perspective, is that the last…
I Fantasize about a World with No Income Tax, but…
Most people fantasize about supermodels (at least most guys, I have no clue about females). But I’m different. I dream about a world with limited government, sort of like what America’s Founding Fathers had in mind. One of the best things about this fantasy world is…
Andrew Sullivan Has No Idea What He’s Talking about, but I Agree with His Conclusion
Even though he’s become rather partisan in recent years, I still enjoy an occasional visit to Andrew Sullivan’s blog. But I was rather amused last night when I read one of his posts, in which he was discussing whether government spending helps or hurts economic…
IMF Recommendation for Europe: Double Down on the Approach that Caused the Sovereign Debt Crisis
Many European nations face a sovereign debt crisis because of excessive spending caused by too much redistribution. The obvious – and only – solution to this crisis is to reverse the policies that caused the problem. So take a wild guess about what the International…
FATCA Law is an International Version of Obamacare’s 1099 Provision, a Nightmare for Cross-Border Economic Activity that Is Undermining Investment in America
One of the tax increases buried in Obamacare was an onerous and intrusive “1099″ scheme that would have required businesses to collect tax identification numbers for just about any vendor and then send paperwork to the IRS whenever they did more than $600 of business….