If you want to understand how government intervention screws up markets and damages an economy, there are two new publications worth reading. First, pick up a copy of Reckless Endangerment, a new book by Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times, and Joshua Rosner, an…
Daily Analysis
Senator Rubio Slams Class Warfare
Obama waved the bloody flag of class warfare in his press conference this past week, though it’s not clear whether he was effective since he went out of his way to attack a provision for corporate jets that was part of his failed stimulus bill. In any event, Senator…
States Feel Tax Competition on Cigarettes
We fight to preserve tax competition among nations, but the principle’s effects exist within the US among the states, as well. George Scoville writes about the likely outcomes of a decision by Vermont to raise their cigarette taxes by $0.38 while New Hampshire…
CAP Leftists Have Accidental Encounter with the Laffer Curve, Learn Nothing
The big-government advocates at the Center for American Progress recently released a series of charts designed to prove America is a low-tax nation. I wish this was the case. The United States does have a lower overall tax burden than Europe, which is shown in one of…
The “Tax Expenditure” Con Job
e left is desperately trying to maneuver Republicans into going along with a tax increase. And they are smart to make this their top goal. After all, it will be very difficult – if not impossible – to increase the burden of government spending without more revenue…
Three Simple Rules to Keep Republicans from Being Seduced by Dishonest and Orwellian Word Games from the Left on Tax Reform and Tax Increases
Those who had the misfortune of seeing President Obama go after “tax breaks for corporate jets” as part of his press conference may be wondering why he was attacking a provision that was in his so-called stimulus and enacted by a Democratic-controlled Congress in…
We Don’t Need an Investor-in-Chief
How was anything ever invented before government started “investing” in new technologies? One wonders these things, given the seriousness with which Keynesians seem to believe that if they don’t choose the economic winners and then throw large sums of money at them –…
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…
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…