by CF&P | Mar 28, 2011 | Blogs, Flat Tax, Taxation
General Electric has received a lot of unwelcome attention for paying zero federal income tax in 2010, even though it reported $5.1 billion in U.S. profits. This is a good news-bad news situation. The good news is that GE’s clever tax planning deprived the government...
by Dan Mitchell | Mar 27, 2011 | Blogs, Crime, Society
Joe Nocera has a must-read story in the New York Times about how the legal fallout from the financial crisis. His basic theme is that the government let all the bigwigs get away with their crimes, but then has a fascinating discussion about how the government targeted...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 21, 2011 | Big Government, Blogs
I sometimes assert that the greatest enemies of freedom in Washington are mortgage payments and tuition bills. When people give me a blank stare, I say that I’m joking, but I use the opportunity to explain that the desire for easy wealth (and the lifestyle it enables)...
by Dan Mitchell | Feb 3, 2011 | Blogs, Uncategorized
The internal revenue code is nightmarishly complex, as illustrated by this video. Americans spend more than 7 billion hours each year in a hopeless effort to figure out how to deal with more than 7 million words of tax law and regulation. Why does this mess exist? The...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 24, 2011 | Bailouts, Big Government, Blogs, Free Market
I’ve always rejected coercive redistribution, particularly when imposed by the federal government. But some types of redistribution are worse than others, and when big business and big government get in bed together, ordinary people are the ones who get screwed. This...