As noted in this blog back in August, the end of Labour rule in the U.K. will not mean the end of big government in that country. The new coalition government has already proposed a large tax hike on capital gains: At present investors only pay CGT of 18pc on gains…
Daily Analysis
Say Goodbye to England
Okay, the title of this post is an absurd exaggeration, but I am not optimistic about the future of the United Kingdom. Government spending has exploded over the last ten-plus years (the largest expansion in the burden of government spending among developed nations),…
Left-Wing Columnists Says We Should Copy Greek Policies to Avoid a Greek-Style Fiscal Crisis
Only in the artificial bubble of Washington do you find people who are willing to make preposterous statements such as those contained in this David Ignatius column. He writes that we should adopt a value-added tax to avoid a Greek-style fiscal crisis, appararently…
Encouraging Polling Numbers
I realize that public opinion polls are quirky and that answers often depend on how questions are phrased. Nonetheless, these results seem very strong. As reported on the Bankrupting America website, there is more than three-to-one opposition against a value-added…
Capital Gains: Part Three.
The final paper in Stephen J. Entin of IRET’s three part series about the capital gains tax rate is entited, Revenue Estimation Of Capital Gains Needs Improvement, and as the title promises it explores the inacurate revenue estimates applied to potential changes…
The Next Step for Supply-Side Economics
Kevin Williamson has a long-overdue piece in National Review making two essential points about supply-side economics and the Laffer Curve. First, he explains that tax cuts are not the fiscal equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. Simply stated, too many Republicans…
Greece’s Problem Is High Tax Rates, not Tax Evasion
The New York Times has an article describing widespread tax evasion in Greece, along with an implication that the country’s fiscal crisis is largely the result of unpaid taxes and could be mostly solved if taxpayers were more obedient to the state. This is an…
Capital Gains: Part Two.
As previously noted, IRET has published a series of three excellent papers on the case for lowering the capital gains tax rate. The second paper is introduced by Stephen J. Entit and written by Paul Evans. Entitled, The Relationship Between Realized Capital Gains…
Is Obama Turning America into a Banana Republic?
I meant to write about this article when it first came out, but it got buried in my inbox. That being said, this Washington Times column by Richard Rahn makes an excellent point about the dangers of too much government. He points out that Argentina used to one of the…
Super-Charging the IRS with Government-Run Healthcare
I blogged a cartoon joking about Obamacare as a Trojan Horse for the IRS, but with each passing day we are learning new – and always unpleasant – details about the mammoth legislation that was imposed by the left. The excerpt below from the Boston Globe…