Oregon voters are currently deciding on personal and business income tax increases.  Should the tax hikes pass, look for Oregonian businesses to avail themselves of the advantages of tax competition and move to other states, such as nearby Washington: A great beauty of the American federal system is that any of the 50 states can […]

German politicians are notoriously bad on European issues, almost always pushing for more centralization, harmonization, and bureaucracy. So it is surprising to see that the German government is rejecting a Luxembourg proposal to give the EU a direct source of tax revenue. This may just be a case of a stopped clock being right twice […]

 According to a Washington Post story, Obama wants to be the anti-Reagan, a President who permanently changes the American people’s attitude about big government. Obama’s efforts to make statism popular, however, are not exactly working out as he hoped. According to a new Washington Post-ABC poll, the American people have become much more libertarian when […]

This has a similar title to an earlier blog post, but the topic is completely different. The U.K.-based Times has a fascinating story about how tax rates are driving business out of London, thus showing the insanity of class-warfare tax policy. Two excerpts are must reading, though the message will fall on deaf ears at […]

This story from San Diego seems like a typical case of bureaucratic over-reaction. A school vice principal decided that a student’s science project may have been a bomb, so he set in motion events leading to a school evacuation. Without knowing further details, that decision may have been at least somewhat reasonable, but the part […]

As reported by the Financial Times, Sebastian Pinera, the brother of Cato’s Jose Pinera, was elected President of Chile this weekend. The press is viewing Pinera’s election through the right-left lens of Latin American politics, but this is a bit misleading since Chile has remained a very pro-market nation during nearly two decades of supposedly […]

While there is always a tendency in Washington to over-analyze the meaning of elections, I think that we can draw the following conclusions from Scott Brown’s victory: 1. Obamacare is an albatross for the Democrats. The White House wants to blame Coakley for being a bad candidate, but Massachusetts is a very left-wing state. Every […]

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Steve Moore notes that the Senate health care bill creates incentives for dual income couples to avoid marriage: Marriage is a revered institution in America but not apparently under the Congressional health care legislation, which contains steep “marriage penalty” taxes, i.e. tax burdens that only get heavier when a […]

I must confess that I didn’t think Scott Brown was going to win the election in Massachusetts, even though I predicted a 50-48 GOP victory. This is a monumental development. It doesn’t necessarily mean Obamacare can be stopped. And it may be that Brown turns out to be a big government squish, like Snowe in […]

The internal revenue codes is so mind-numbingly complex that even the head of the IRS uses a professional tax preparer. But that’s hardly a surprise. What is a bit shocking, though, is that Commissioner Shulman has the gall to claim that he favors tax code simplification when his IRS has been promulgating rules and regulations […]