A former Governor of Delaware, Pete DuPont, explains that a value-added tax means bigger government and slower growth. This issue is very important since Obama clearly is trying to set the stage for imposing this European-style national sales tax in the United…
Daily Analysis
The IMF Is Urging Governments to Adopt Regulatory and Tax Cartels to Benefit Politicians
Price fixing is illegal in the private sector, but unfortunately there are no rules against schemes by politicians to create oligopolies in order to prop up bad government policy. The latest example comes from the bureaucrats at the International Monetary Fund, who…
Class Warfare, Tax Rates, and the Laffer Curve
Obama imposed higher tax rates on the so-called rich as part of his government-run healthcare scheme, and he wants to punish success with additional tax rate increases at the end of this year. This excerpt from a New York Post column comments on how many people are…
More on Obama and Socialism
More on Obama and Socialism. I got some interesting feedback about my pseudo-defense of Obama against the accusation that he is a socialist. It was a faux defense because my goal was simply to point out that Obama is guilty of a different form of statism. For those…
The Right Way for Banks to Bail Themselves Out
The politicians are urging big taxes on banks, using rhetoric designed to trick people into thinking that this is a way to make the banks pay for their own bailouts. But a general tax on all banks simply means that well-run banks subsidize the reckless banks – a…
The Greek Bailout.
I get a lot of email asking me about Greece, especially since I don’t give the issue much attention on the blog. I am paying close attention to what’s happening, especially since Greece is a canary in the coal mine. But I generally try to avoid being…
Robert Samuelson Punctures Obama's VAT Trial Balloon.
His article doesn’t completely slam the door on a value-added tax, but Robert Samuleson’s piece in the Washington Post does highlight some of the very serious problems with a VAT – including more government spending, burdens on families, additional…
Complicated Banking Regulations and Double Taxation Hurt Americans Abroad.
The New York Times ran an article this week about an increasing number of Americans living and working abroad who are considering taking the drastic step of giving up their American citizenship. Most of these expats would ideally like to maintain their citzenship but…
Yes, Taxes Change Behavior.
I’ve read several places that Ronald Reagan instinctively understood supply-side economics because Hollywood stars sooner or later learned that making more than a couple of movies per year was pointless when marginal tax rates were 90 percent. The same thing…
A Sordid Combination of Tax Greed and Protectionist.
Tax-news.com reports that the French and Italian governments want Europe to impose a tax on imports from nations that don’t adopt misguided climate-change/global-warming rules. This is awful policy, but the good news is that such a policy presumably won’t…