Imagine how weird it would be if the Cato Institute and Americans for Tax Reform praised Barack Obama for fiscal responsibility. And think how inconceivable it would be for the Heritage Foundation and the National Taxpayers Union to applaud Tim “Turbotax” Geithner for economic stewardship. But the Canadian version of that happened while I was […]
read more...When the new Tory-led government came to power in the United Kingdom, I was rather unimpressed. David Cameron positioned himself as a British version of George W. Bush, full of “compassionate conservative” ideas to expand the burden of government. But even worse than Bush, because Cameron also jacked up taxes when he first took office, including big […]
read more...Regular readers know that good fiscal policy takes place when government spending grows slower than the private economy. Nations that maintain this Golden Rule for extended periods of time shrink the relative burden of government spending, thus enabling more growth by freeing up resources for the productive sector of the economy and creating leeway for lower tax rates. […]
read more...There’s an old saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. That may be true if you’re in Hollywood and visibility is a key to long-run earnings. But in the world of public policy, you don’t want to be a punching bag. And that describes my role in a book excerpt just published by Salon. Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematics professor […]
read more...The title of this post sounds like the beginning of a strange joke, but it’s actually because we’re covering three issues today. Our first topic is corporate taxation. More specifically, we’re looking at a nation that seems to be learning that it’s foolish the have a punitive corporate tax system. By way of background, the […]
read more...Our leftist friends have decided that income inequality is a scourge that must be addressed. That might be a noble goal if they were motivated by a desire to improve the lives of the less fortunate. Based on their policy proposals, though, it appears that the main goal is to punish the so-called rich. And they’re so fixated […]
read more...In previous columns, I’ve explained why a wealth tax is a very bad idea. And I’ve also pontificated on why leftists are wrong to pursue policies of coerced equality. So it goes without saying that I’m a big fan of a new Wall Street Journal column by John Steele Gordon. He writes that the anti-wealth ideology animating the political elite is based on a fundamental […]
read more...I haven’t spent much time writing about Thomas Piketty’s inequality book for the simple reason that my goal is economic liberty, not equality. That being said, I think that Piketty is fundamentally misguided even if the goal is helping the poor. Simply stated, long-run growth is the best way of reducing poverty and boosting living standards. […]
read more...On many occasions, I’ve explained that economic output is a function of how much labor and capital are productively utilized. This is why I relentlessly criticize policies that undermine GDP growth by hindering the use of these “factors of production.” That’s a bit of economic jargon, but it helps to explain why we shouldn’t be discriminating against capital […]
read more...Keynesian economics is a failure. It didn’t work for Hoover and Roosevelt in the 1930s. It didn’t work for Japan in the 1990s. And it didn’t work for Bush or Obama in recent years. No matter where’s it’s been tried, it’s been a flop. So why, whenever there’s a downturn, do politicians resuscitate the idea that bigger government will “stimulate” the economy? I’ve tried […]
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