Texas is in much better shape than California. Taxes are lower, in part because Texas has no state income tax. No wonder the Lone Star State is growing faster and creating more jobs. And the gap will soon get even wider since California voters recently decided to drive away more productive people by raising top […]

Back in September, I shared a very good primer on the capital gains tax from the folks at the Wall Street Journal, which explained why this form of double taxation is so destructive. I also posted some very good analysis from John Goodman about the issue. Unfortunately, even though the United States already has a […]

One of the key ways of controlling state and local tax burdens, according to this map from the Tax Foundation, is to not have an income tax. But that’s not too surprising. States have just a couple of ways of generating significant tax revenue, so it stands to reason that states without an income tax […]

Hopefully we’re all disgusted when insiders rig the system to rip off taxpayers. And I suspect you’re not surprised to know that the worst examples come from California, which is in a race with Illinois to see which state can become the Greece of America. Well, the Golden State has a new über-bureaucrat. Here are […]

I have a love-hate attitude toward international bureaucracies. I’m mostly negative about organizations such as the IMF, World Bank, UN, and OECD. In part this is because they are a very expensive burden on taxpayers, but also because they generally push for bad policy. It’s reprehensible, for instance, that the OECD has allied itself with […]

One of my favorite Cato Institute publications is the Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors, which is produced by my colleague Chris Edwards. The report card uses variables such as the burden of government spending and the degree of class warfare tax policy to determine which states are moving in the right direction and […]

I despise protectionism. Mostly because it is bad economic policy, but also because politicians often use protectionism as a way of diverting attention from their own failures. So when I appeared on Neil Cavuto’s show to comment on President Obama’s criticism of “outsourcing,” I was a tad bit critical. I think my opening comments were […]

One of the principles of good tax policy and fundamental tax reform is that there should be no double taxation of income that is saved and invested. Such a policy promotes current consumption at the expense of future consumption, which is simply an econo-geek way of saying that it penalizes capital formation. This isn’t very […]

In my travels through Europe, I often wind up debating whether policy is better in the United States or Europe. I generally try to explain that this is the wrong comparison, both because Europe is not a monolithic bloc and also because most individual nations have both good policies and bad policies. But sometimes you […]

Every year, I look forward to the annual releases of both Economic Freedom of the World and the Index of Economic Freedom. With their comprehensive rankings, these two publications enable interested parties to compare nations and see which countries are moving in the right direction. As an American, I’m ashamed to say that these publications […]