In a very predictable editorial this morning, the New York Times pontificated in favor of higher taxes. Compared to Paul Krugman’s rant earlier in the week, which featured the laughable assertion that letting people keep more of the money they earn is akin to sending them a check from the government, the piece seemed rational. But […]

It’s hard to believe that anybody would classify the Germans as a master race after reading this Spiegel article. Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have a nutty (but at least non-coercive) plan for rich people to give away a big share of their fortunes. The German billionaires are rejecting this plan. But not because they […]

With the public unconvinced of the wisdom of soaking the rich, the latest hot idea floating around in statist circles is not to soak the rich, but rather the really, super-duper, ultra rich. In a class-warfare filled screed, James Surowiecki wrote in the New Yorker on the need to “Soak the Very, Very Rich.” A […]

Caroline Baum of Bloomberg has an excellent column explaining why soak-the-rich taxes don’t work. Simply stated, wealthy people are not like you and me. They have tremendous control over the timing, composition, and level of their income. When the rich are hit with higher tax rates, they adjust their behavior and protect themselves by reducing […]

I have a column in today’s New York Post about Obama’s plan for higher taxes next year. My main point is that higher tax rates on the so-called rich have a very negative impact on the rest of us because even small reductions in economic growth have a big impact over time. This is a […]

These results won’t come as a surprise to anyone who has compared long-run growth rates in Hong Kong, the United States, France, and North Korea, but there’s a new study by three economists showing that nations with better tax policy grow faster and create more jobs. There are many other factors that also determine growth, […]

The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, which means a big tax increase in 2011. Tax rates for all brackets will increase, the double tax on dividends will skyrocket from 15 percent to 39.6 percent, the child credit will shrink, the death tax will be reinstated […]

Australia got rid of its death tax in 1979. A couple of Aussie academics investigated whether the elimination of the tax had any impact on death rates. They found the ultimate example of supply-side economics, as reported in the abstract of their study. In 1979, Australia abolished federal inheritance taxes. Using daily deaths data, we […]

Much of the economic debate in Washington revolves around the silly Keynesian notion that politicians can stimulate an economy by borrowing money from the private sector and using the funds to make government bigger. That didn’t work for Hoover and Roosevelt during the 1930s, Japan during the 1990s, Bush in 2008, or Obama last year […]

The lazy politician looks at deficits and screams, “soak the rich!”  But as CBO’s latest analysis of federal average tax rates shows, they are already paying a highly disproportionate share of taxes. The graphs above show that the highest earners are already paying considerably more in taxes than their share of total income due primary […]