I saw this odd story about wasteful government spending in James Taranto’s Best of the Web email. The bureaucrats at Britain’s National Health Service are sqandering thousands of dollars to create a giant “Burger Boy” as part of a government…
Daily Analysis
The New Deal Hurt the Economy
A great column in the Wall Street Journal explains how FDR’s policies hurt the economy. That is true, but the really interesting part of the column for me is that it explains how Roosevelt (and then Truman) were convinced the economy would return to depression…
A VAT Means Tax Day Is Every Day
Caroline Baum of Bloomberg has a good column against the value-added tax, in part because she quotes me, but more so because she effectively explains that a national sales tax like the VAT would be an add-on tax that would finance much bigger government: As Americans…
Debating the Flat Tax for U.S. News & World Report
Clemson University was a big rival when I was at the University of Georgia, so it seems natural that I am locking horns with someone from that school as we debate whether we should have a flat tax or the current system. You can see both arguments at this link, and…
What If We Could Cheat the Government, Sort of Like the Government Cheats Us?
I have a column in the Washington Times speculating on ways we could lower our tax bills if we could use the same creative accounting that the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation used to help impose Obamacare on the nation: If you’re…
Europe Should Not Copy America's Imperialist and Anti-Growth Worldwide Tax Regime
The overall fiscal burden in the United States may be lower than it is in Europe, but there are some features of the internal revenue code that are far worse than what can be found on the other side of the Atlantic. America has a “worldwide” tax system,…
Ultra-Rich Leftists Want to Atone for their Guilt by Paying Higher Taxes…And They Want to Impose their Neurotic Views on the Rest of Us
A Washington Post columnist reports on a group of limousine liberals who are lobbying to pay more taxes. Of course, there’s no law that prevents them from writing big checks to the government and voluntarily paying more, so what they’re really lobbying for…
Bernanke's Hollow Deficit Warning
Even though I’ve been in Washington almost 25 years, I am endlessly amazed at the chutzpah of people who support higher spending and bigger government while piously lecturing the rest of us about the need to control deficits. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is a good…
Richard Rahn on the IRS and its (lack of) Morality
Richard Rahn recently wrote an article in the Washington Times about issues of morality and the IRS. His conclusions about the oppressive nature of the federal tax bureaucracy and accurate contrasts with state tax agencies are particularly relevant in April. Would…
Bashing the VAT in the New York Post.
My life is now devoted to saving America from the European-style national sales tax known as the value-added tax. Writing in the New York Post, I explain that the impact of a VAT in Europe is bigger government, not smaller deficits: The real-world evidence shows that…