Considering that every economic theory agrees that living standards and worker compensation are closely correlated with the amount of capital in an economy (this picture is a compelling illustration of the relationship), one would think that politicians – particularly those who say they want to improve wages – would be very anxious not to create […]
read more...I’m not a big fan of government conspiracy theories, largely because the people in Washington are too bloody incompetent to do anything effectively. Heck, sometimes they can’t even waste money properly even though they have lots of practice. But it recently crossed my mind that maybe President Obama was born in Denmark. Not in a […]
read more...To answer the question in the title, it means you need to read the fine print. This is because we have a president who thinks the government shouldn’t confiscate more than 20 percent of a company’s income, but he only gives that advice when he’s in Ghana. And the same president says it’s time to […]
read more...President Obama’s fiscal policy is a dismal mixture. On spending, he wants a European-style welfare state. On taxes, he is fixated on class-warfare tax policy. If we want to know the consequences of that approach, we can look at the ongoing collapse of Greece. Or, if we don’t like overseas examples, we can look at […]
read more...Even though he is a foolish statist, I wanted Francois Hollande to win the French presidency. Sarkozy was a statist as well, after all, and my “Richard Nixon Disinfectant Rule” says that it’s better to have the out-of-the-closet statist prevail in such contests in hopes that the supposedly right-of-center party can then regroup and offer […]
read more...A good tax system (like the flat tax) does not impose extra layers of tax on income that is saved and invested. I’ve tried to emphasize this point with a flowchart, and I’ve defended so-called trickle-down economics, which is nothing more than the common-sense notion that investment boosts wages for workers by making them more […]
read more...I think high tax rates on certain classes of citizens are immoral and discriminatory. If the government is going to collect revenue, all taxpayers should be treated equally, with something akin to a simple flat tax. But most people don’t seem to care about having the law apply the same to all people, so I […]
read more...The silly debate about the “Buffett Rule” is really an argument about the extent to which there should be more double taxation of income that is saved and invested. Politicians conveniently forget that dividends and capital gains get hit by the corporate income tax. And since America now has the developed world’s highest corporate income […]
read more...I mentioned yesterday that Senator Johnson of Wisconsin did a good job at the Senate Budget Committee’s hearing on tax reform. Today, I want to elaborate on two of his points. First, he asked all three of the witnesses what the maximum marginal tax rate on any American should be. The two leftists on the […]
read more...Supporters of individual liberty and national sovereignty have been skeptical of the United Nations, and with good reason. With the support of statists such as George Soros, the U.N. pushes for crazy ideas such as global taxation and global currency. But there’s another international bureaucracy, also funded by American tax dollars, that is even more […]
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