A new study from the Adam Smith Institute in the United Kingdom provides overwhelming evidence that class-warfare tax policy is grossly misguided and self-destructive. The authors examine the likely impact of the 10-percentage point increase in the top income tax…
Daily Analysis
Obama Hypocrisy Is Disgusting, but Unsurprising
I don’t like it when politicians pass laws that undermine the freedom and prosperity of the American people. But I really hate it when politicians pass those laws and exempt themselves. Years ago, as a lowly Senate staffer, I recall watching a debate about whether…
Government Employee Pensions Are a Budget Issue, but Also a Growth and Fairness Issue
Eli Lehrer of the Heartland Institute has an article in the Weekly Standard claiming that underfunded pension plans are not the problem with state budgets. This paragraph is a good summary of his article. In the end, many states facing very large current budget…
English Riots, Faux Austerity, and Krugman’s Fairy Tale
London was just hit by heavy riots as part of a protest against the “deep” and “savage” budget cuts of the Cameron government. This is not the first time the U.K. has endured riots. The welfare lobby, bureaucrats, and other recipients of taxpayer largesse are becoming…
If the Obama-GOP Budget Deal Is a Kiss-Your-Sister Agreement, Claudia Schiffer Ain’t My Sibling
Press reports indicate that there is a tentative agreement between Republicans and Democrats to trim $33 billion of spending for the remainder of the current fiscal year. Here are a few blurbs from a story in The Hill. A source familiar with the talks said members of…
Jeffrey Sachs and the Fictional “Race to the Bottom” Caused by Tax Competition
Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University is a big booster of the discredited notion that foreign aid is a cure-all for poverty in the developing world, but he is now branching out and saying silly things about policy in other areas. In a column for the Financial Times, he…
Republicans and the Suicidal Impulse
Yesterday, I analyzed how the GOP should fight the budget battle, but I may have made a big mistake. I assumed the Republican leadership actually wanted to do the right thing. I thought they learned the right lessons from the disastrous Bush years, and that the GOP no…
Budget Battle Update: It’s About Preparing for the Inevitable Fight, not Forcing a Shutdown
According to news reports, Democrats and Republicans are unlikely to reach any sort of budget agreement before April 8, when a short-term spending bill for the current fiscal year expires. Barring some new development, this could mean a shutdown of the non-essential…
Why General Electric’s Non-Existent Tax Bill Is Both Good News and Bad News
General Electric has received a lot of unwelcome attention for paying zero federal income tax in 2010, even though it reported $5.1 billion in U.S. profits. This is a good news-bad news situation. The good news is that GE’s clever tax planning deprived the government…
In One Chart, Everything You Wanted to Know about the Relationship Between Good Policy and Economic Prosperity
Okay, the title’s an exaggeration, but this chart is rather revealing. It shows how per-capita GDP has changed between 1980 and 2008 in Chile, Argentina, and Venezuela. As you can see, Chile used to be the poorest of the three countries and now it is comparatively…